Artist, architect and wartime Bevin boy whose work was inspired by the mines of south Wales
Michael Edmonds, who has died aged 87, was an architect, artist and author whose openness to new experiences made him a gentle radical. In 1944 he was plucked from rural Dorset to labour underground in Wales. What might have proved an ordeal became what he described as his "gold brick in the cellar", informing his social and artistic vision for the rest of his life.
He grew up on a fruit farm at Bere Heath, Wareham, that his father, James, had hacked out of gorse and brambles. He was an only child and his mother, Joanna May Burr, had died giving birth to him. As a small boy he read, painted and ran free over the heath, fascinated by tar-splashed road men, farm labourers, Gypsies and squatters.
Continue reading...