My sister Liz Barnard, who has died aged 83, began her working life in the government Careers Service, but in her 30s she changed career herself. In 1977 she embarked on a degree in furnishing and interior design at the London College of Furniture, and then moved back to Norwich, where she had grown up, and began to develop property.
She became well known as a “house doctor”, styling and presenting homes to their best advantage, and also took on garden design and plant photography. In 1983, she was highly commended in a Sunday Times competition for a design for a small garden, and in the 1990s, her work was featured in the Norwich press, and nationally in the Sunday Telegraph and the Express.
Liz was born in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, during the second world war, to Mary (nee Loomes), a teacher, and Arthur Barnard, known as Barney, an accountant. It was a time of rationing and bombs, and Liz continued to be frightened by loud bangs for the rest of her life.
Barney moved to gain promotion in his career as a municipal accountant and the family followed him. By 1949, Liz had three siblings, and soon after that, when Mary’s sister died, her two children, along with Mary’s mother, Agnes, joined the family.
Wartime rationing continued into the 50s, with the family living by now in a large house in Norwich, and Liz remembered often being cold and hungry. Fortunately there was also a big garden, with chickens for eggs, fruit trees and a vegetable garden, and this sparked Liz’s love of nature and self-sufficiency.
She attended Willow Lane primary and Notre Dame high school and went off to Liverpool University in 1962 to study social sciences before joining the Careers Service in Bristol. In 1966 she married Pete Willson, and they settled in Essex. It was as Liz Willson that she wrote a careers column for the Daily Telegraph in 1970, but later that decade the marriage ended in divorce.
As well as working as an interior designer, in the early 90s Liz was a lecturer at Norwich School of Art and from 1994 until 1996 she was director of the interior design course at Easton College in Norfolk. She loved art, and regularly attended exhibitions in London and at the Sainsbury Centre at UEA. She could never resist a sculpture trail or a stately home. She became an active member of the Norfolk Gardens Trust and from 2013 edited their newsletter.
Her interest in young people never waned. She would attend the end of year exhibition of students’ work at the Norwich School of Art and fill her home with the work she purchased. Liz also wrote poetry, enjoyed entertaining, learned how to belly dance and tended an allotment. She felt strongly about women’s rights, and cared deeply about animal welfare.
Liz is survived by her siblings, John, Antonia and me.
