ED 250 05 05

Reference code

ED 250 05 05

Title

Papers of Violet Mary (Mamie) Durnford, 1887 - 1979

Level

Sub-series

Administrative / Biographical history

Elder daughter and third child of Richard and Beatrice Durnford, she worked with the YMCA during the war. In 1919 she accompanied Lavinia Talbot, daughter of the Bishop of Winchester, to work in American canteen units in France. In 1922 she married John Chaloner Chute, then an assistant master and a house master at Eton, where they remained until he retired in 1936. Francis Chute in The Chutes of the Vyne (Woodfield Publishing, 2005) says that Mamie, 'musician and humorist, was a universal favourite'. Certainly her brothers all wrote to her and she appears to have maintained the connection with Edith Keate and other relations. After Jack's death in 1961 she lived at Buckland Newton and later at Bramley, and there is a picture of a birthday party given for her at The Vyne.