Many local residents will know that Kinn McIntosh, a local author who not only wrote fiction but was passionate about the history of our area, passed away last December. She was hugely respected by the community, not only for her support of all things local, but her legendary summer strawberry tea events!
Below is an obituary -with thanks – from the Kent Family History Society
( https://www.kfhs.org.uk/ ) and a link to a recording of the memorial service held at Sturry Parish Church, with kind permission of her family.
Kinn Hamilton McIntosh MBE (1930 – 2024)
Kinn, was an active local historian with a great interest in parish history. She published several local histories about Sturry and the surrounding area, several of which are still in print.
Kinn was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire on 20th June 1930 and educated in that town at Greenhead High School. She became ill with a chronic condition in 1946 when she was 16, and moved to Kent when her father became the local doctor in Sturry. She said that she never married and sometimes worked in her father’s surgery as acting practice manager and dispenser due to her health.
Under the pen name Catherine Aird, she was the author of more than twenty crime fiction novels, many set in in the fictional County of Calleshire, which she based on her home county of Kent. Kinn publishing her first novel, The Religious Body, in 1966 and her final novel, Constable Country, in 2023.
She was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from the University of Kent in 1985 and in 1988 an MBE for services to the Girl Guides Association. She was chairman of the United Kingdom Girl Guide Finance Committee for eleven years and for a time was the Assistant Treasurer of the World Association of Girl Guides and Scouts. in 2015 she was awarded the Crime Writers Association Golden Handcuffs award for lifetime achievement and the Diamond Dagger for an outstanding lifetime’s contribution to crime writing.
Active to the last she was taken ill at her home in Sturry, and died on 21st December 2024 at the age of 94.
Kinn’s books on local history are available from Chapters Coffee and Books in Sturry High Street.
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