OBITUARY : Rosalind Hudson

14 Jul 2013

OBITUARY : Rosalind Hudson
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Rosalind Hudson, who has died aged 86, worked at Bletchley Park during the 
Second World War and later constructed perfect scale models of Highgrove 
House, the Dulwich Picture Gallery and of buildings in Bath, Wiltshire, 
London and Edinburgh.

Her lifelong interest in architecture had its roots in Liverpool, where 
her maternal grandfather, Walter Aubrey Thomas, had designed the Liver 
Building ( begun in 1908 ), whose distinctive silhouette was to become 
synonymous with the city.

Born in the Wirral on July 31 1926, Rosalind Audrey Clare Latham attended 
the Liverpool School of Art, where the illustrator Norman Thelwell, best 
known for his humorous drawings of ponies, was a fellow student.

She abandoned her studies to join the WRNS, and after training was sent to 
Bletchley Park, where she worked in Hut 8, in which the German naval 
Enigma ciphers were broken by a team led by Alan Turing. Her natural 
modesty meant that she never sought the limelight about her role in this 
vital war work, and she would never discuss what she did.

In 1945, when Bletchley was running down, she was sent to the south coast 
to help with work at the naval dockyards. It was there that she met a 
dashing young Marine, Richard Hudson, who was on embarkation leave, about 
to be posted abroad for two years. One day Rosalind, still in her WRNS 
uniform, was setting off for home from Portsmouth railway station, and was 
waving him goodbye from the window of her carriage, when he called out: 
"Will you marry me ?" She just had time to call out "Yes !" before her 
train pulled out of sight...../snip/

...Rosalind Hudson lived lightly, a great proponent of the 
make-do-and-mend ethos of her wartime youth. She could upholster her own 
furniture, make her own curtains and smock dresses for her daughters, and 
paint her own rooms. She was a wizard at anagrams, puzzles and word-games.

A diminutive but always energetic figure, she was often to be found 
perched at the top of a precarious stepladder, replacing a light bulb or 
straightening a pelmet. She enjoyed birds and the natural world around the 
farm near Bath where she brought up her family.

She is survived by her husband and by their three sons and two daughters.

Rosalind Hudson, born July 31 1926, died July 7 2013 


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/10178823/Rosalind-Hudson.html

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02617/hudson_2617177b.jpg