Heywood Sumner

George Heywood Maunoir Sumner (1853–1940) was originally an English painter, illustrator and craftsman, closely involved with the Arts and Crafts movement and the late-Victorian London art world. In his mid-forties he relocated to Cuckoo Hill, near Fordingbridge in Hampshire, England, and spent the rest of his life investigating and recording the archaeology, geology and folklore of the New Forest and Cranborne Chase regions.

Sumner was born in 1853 at Old Alresford, Hampshire, the son of Reverend George Henry Sumner, an Anglican clergyman, and Mary Elizabeth Sumner (née Heywood), also prominent in the Church of England and well known as the founder of the Mothers' Union.

After attending Eton, Sumner studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1881 qualified as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, London.

In 1883 Sumner married Agnes Benson, the sister of his college friend W A S Benson. Together they had five children – three boys and two girls. In 1897 Sumner retired from London and moved his family to Bournemouth on the south coast of England, ostensibly because of his wife's ill-health. In 1902 he acquired a plot of land at Cuckoo Hill near South Gorley, on the east side of the Avon valley, and designed and built his ideal family house. Sumner lived at Cuckoo Hill from 1904 until his death in 1940 at the age of 87. The house has since been renamed "Heywood Sumner House", and is currently run as a care home.

Sumner studied law at Oxford and London alongside his childhood friend W A S Benson, who later became a successful metalwork designer; it was through this friendship that he was introduced to William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement.

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