Rediscovering Richard Toovey, the Leamington Artist

A few years ago, my dad brought an envelope home containing some documents he found at Leamington town hall where he works. I was excited when I saw the documents as they contained information about an old Leamington artist called Richard Toovey.

In the envelope were sugar tickets, ration cards, registration cards, a WH Smith & Sons Ordnance Survey map of Rugby, a stamped booklet of the Lord Mayor’s show in 1863 and a British Museum reading room card.

Seeing these documents encouraged me to research Richard Toovey and his family. I had some very exciting findings. The Tooveys were a family of artists who originally came from Belgium.  Richard was a painter and his father, Edwin Toovey was an etcher.

This document is a Lord Mayor’s Show commemorative booklet stamped in London and it shows a post date of 1863 when Richard was about 1. It is obviously a precious memento if kept since childhood.

On the reverse it showed their address as 30 Portland Place, Leamington Spa. A W.H. Smith & Sons Ordnance map of Rugby, which belonged to Richard, showed his address as Landscape Villa in 1879. So the family moved a couple of times around Leamington Spa.