One-armed artist still an enigma

For many years, little was known about Mr Evans, creator of many carefully-drawn pen and ink representations of a Seaford few of us cculd remember. 'He was sometimes in debt and in order to settle up with tradespeople he would do them a sketch "in lieu of". That is why there are so many of his sketches about in Seaford,' an elderly resident told me in 1989. All who knew him spoke of his lack of one arm, leading to his nickname 'Wingy'. The late Colonel Jack Foster used the name 'Lumps', but I have not heard that from anyone else.

I marvel that a one-armed man years ago could deal so well with mapping-pen and bottle of Indian ink, to produce such detailed drawings with seemingly every pebble on the beach, every flint in the wall, every railing, every leaf done individually. In addition, many of his pictures are subscribed with a short history or other explanation of the subject, in clear copperplate, Old English or block capital letters. Comparison with work by local photographer Mr WR Wynter and with sketches from The Illustrated London News and other periodicals shows that Mr Evans did not always rely on his own experience of historical events such as shipwrecks and storms. His representations of the beaching of SS Peruvian in 1899, for example, closely resemble photographs in the museum's collection; some he made on the prepared surface of palm-oil 'nuts' (which formed the ship's cargo, found scattered over the shingle) were barely 3cm across. Such samples of his work could be found gracing many a local what-not or mantelshelf till comparatively recent times.

Mr Evans produced numbers of the same (or very similar) street scenes, but with a diversity of pedestrians, onlookers, workmen and so on. I have been told that these were added to suit the requirements of the one he was 'paying' in this way: 'Just put in my wife coming out of the baker's, and my little lad bowling his hoop in the road' - for example.

When in 2001 the museum published A Seaford Sketchbook, a collection of 87 of his drawings, some intensive research led by member David Taylor revealed few facts about Mr Evans. He seems to have been the odd one out in a distinguished family.

Harry Harison Evans was born in Seaford on March 18, 1849, the great-grandson of the Rev Thomas Evans, the same Rev Evans who 'seemed to wish to fight' during the 1789 riot outside the Town Hall in South Street, over the election of a new Bailiff. This was the occasion when the building was so badly damaged that demolition was contemplated. The reverend gentleman was himself elected Bailiff in 1808 and 1810, and on January 6, 1811 a presentation was made to him of a vase inscribed 'for his manly, impartial and independent conduct on the bench in persevering to preserve the freedom of elective franchise'.

One of the contenders for that Bailiff's job in 1789 was Mr Lancelot Harison who figured largely in local politics - please remember our artist's middle name, the maiden name of his mother Mary Alice - so within only two generations, or even earlier, the families were intertwined. Harry had a brother William eight years younger, from whom present-day Evanses are descended; two years later, their mother died in childbirth. It seems that father John Harry Evans, a surgeon and Jurat and Freeman of Seaford, was a colleague of local worthies Dr William Tyler Smith and Mr WR Wynter, and possibly even of Charles Dickens, through his membership of public health and similar committees. He died in 1881.

Harry, described in the 1871 census as an office clerk, unemployed, seems to have moved around the family, finally living with his sister Miss Elizabeth Evans in Hindover Road, his address when he died in 1926, aged 77. Though several reasons for his loss of an arm have been suggested, the circumstances - like so much else of his life - remain unexplained.

So far, we have not found any portrait or photograph of him. How ironic that today his work can be seen in so many homes as framed scenes or printed on postcards, place mats, tea-towels and other souvenirs of old Seaford, yet the life of the artist is still such a mystery.