Bridget Kitley

Bridget Kitley (1931 − 2018) was born in Hampstead, London, to Montagu and Enid Slater. She had an elder sister, Anna and younger sister, Carol. She was sent to various boarding schools, including Monkton Wyld School in Dorset. She met her first husband, Julian Rea, at a Young Communist camp in East Berlin when she was 19. They had two children, Judy and Steve. They moved to Ghana in the late 50s but Bridget left Julian and brought the children back to England. She worked to support her family. Bridget married Pete Kitley in 1964, with whom she had her third child, Jess. They lived in Highgate. The relationship foundered after some years. Bridget qualified as a teacher when she was 48 and taught some of the most challenging children in Hackney. She met Richard in the late 70s. They never married but lived together in Highgate and their cottage in Cattistock, Dorset. Bridget was a grandmother and great grandmother. As well as gardening and photography, she loved poetry, theatre, painting, drawing and music, and wrote some poetry and short stories of her own.