gallery

Mary Keightley 1854 - 1946
Kirchditmold near Kassel Sept 16th 1875

inscribed as title and dated " Sept 16th 1875"

pencil and watercolour
17 x 24.50 cm.
Notes

Kirchditmold is located 3.5 km northwest of Kassel city center at the foot of the Hoher Habichtswald on a spur of the Lindenberg. The center of the town, which is located on the hill and where the Kirchditmold church and the Teichstrasse and Zentgrafenstrasse shopping streets are located, has a village-like structure, while the rest of Kirchditmold is characterized by single-family home settlements. Kirchditmold borders on Bad Wilhelmshöhe , Harleshausen , Rothenditmold and the Vorderer Westen .

The town was incorporated into Kassel as a district in 1906. The west of Kirchditmold, which borders directly on the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe , is one of the upscale residential areas of the city of Kassel. Kirchditmold was first mentioned in a document in 1019  , but was founded at the latest in the time of Boniface . Saint Heimerad preached in "Ditmelle" at the beginning of the eleventh century. The then Martinskirche, which was built on a hill on the site of a much older pagan sacrificial site, was important in Frankish times as the seat of an archpriest. From the end of the eleventh century, the Kirchditmold High Court was under the jurisdiction of the Counts of Schauenburg , who owed their title of count to this family. When Henry Raspe IV, the last Langrave of Thuringia from the Ludowinger family , died in 1247, the Archbishop of Mainz , Siegfried III of Eppstein, tried to seize control of the Ditmold court and the city of Kassel by invoking ancient rights and began the Thuringian-Hessian War of Succession. On 26 March of the same year, he enfeoffed Hermann and Henry of Wolfershausen with the High Court of Ditmold. 

In 1385, Kirchditmold was plundered during the siege of Kassel by Balthasar of Thuringia . The population of Kirchditmold converted to the Protestant faith between 1524 and 1534 under Pastor Hektor Walter.

During the Seven Years' War, Kirchditmold was a center of conflict. Numerous battles and troop movements took place, which the then-pastor Johann Christoph Cuntz documented in detail. After the tower of the old Kirchditmold baptismal church collapsed on April 26, 1780, the present Kirchditmold church was built on the same site between 1787 and 1792.On April 1, 1906, Kirchditmold was incorporated into Kassel, and in 1928 the manor district of Oberförsterei Kirchditmold was also incorporated.

Artist biography

Mary Keightley (1854-1946) was the youngest daughter of Archibald Keightley (1795-1877), executor of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s estate. She was a good amateur artist. Archibald Keightley (1795-1877), who was a solicitor who was the executor for Sir Thomas Lawrence, who had died earlier in 1830. Mr Keightley was responsible for the sale of Sir Thomas's collections, some of which were not paid for!  There is a very interesting story about Sir Thomas's collection of old master drawings which were part of the assets Mr Keightley hadto dispose of. Following his work as a solicitor, Mr Keightley a few years later became the Registrar for the Charterhouse School, where he remained for 39 years.

Mary Keightley was born in 1854, in Charterhouse, Middlesex, England, United Kingdom, her father, Archibald Keightley, was 58 and her mother, Sarah Elizabeth Yates, was 41. She lived in London, England for about 20 years and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, United Kingdom in 1891. She died on 20 April 1946, in Camberley, Surrey, England, United Kingdom, at the age of 93.