Leeds church's marvellous mosaic has fascinating history - YEP letters
FROM: Michael Meadowcroft, Leeds 13
It was good to see the photograph of the marvellous mosaic at St Aidan’s Church, Roundhay Road, (Yorkshire Evening Post, February 19).
It ought really to be much better known. The article correctly states that it was designed by the celebrated artist Frank Brangwyn but fails to mention that it has connections with two Leeds Lord Mayors from the renowned locomotive engineering Kitson family.
The mosaic was commissioned by Brangwyn’s friend and fellow artist Robert Hawthorne Kitson whose cousin Frederick James Kitson was Lord Mayor in 1908-09 and whose younger sister, Beatrice Kitson, was Lord Mayor in 1942-43.
Robert was gay and, feeling insecure after the Oscar Wilde case, left England to live in Taormina, Sicily. He built a beautiful house there, Casa Cuseni, overlooking the bay of Naxos and with a view of Mount Etna.
He had to abandon the house when Italy entered the war but returned briefly after the war, before his death in 1947.