Her paternal grandparents were actress and theatrical manager Mary Moore (later Lady Wyndham)[2] and actor and playwright James Albery.
[1] Albery was the god-daughter of Eleanor ("Nellie") Farjeon, the author, poet, biographer, historian, satirist, journalist, broadcaster and award-winner.
She trained at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, in London, for five years in the late 1920s alongside fellow students and life-long close friends Judith Ledeboer, Justin Blanco White, and Mary Beaumont Crowley (later Medd), all of whom, unlike Albery, had had the benefit of parents who ensured that they received a proper education.
It was in this period that Albery designed and built five chalk pisé houses, influenced by the Arts and Crafts style, near Andover, Hampshire.
These chalk houses were built by local labourers under a foreman supervised by Albery, drawing upon her personal experience of working on building sites.
[4] Albery was a member, later a Fellow, of the Royal Institute of British Architects and a co-author, along with Ledeboer, Jane Drew and Elizabeth Denby, of an influential report in 1944.
Her interest and experience in this area are evident in an unbuilt competition entry dating from about 1946 for housing on the site of Churchill Gardens in Pimlico (ultimately occupied by a scheme designed by Powell & Moya).
[7] Amongst other things, Churchill Gardens were famous at the time for having their hot water supply relayed directly from the Battersea Power Station.
That enabled Albery to be on site at Cobnuts virtually every day, talking to the foreman, the construction workers, the clerk of works and the various contractors (plumbing, electrical, etc.
A sensitively-architectrually-designed family house, Cobnuts was remarkable, amongst other things, for having a roof made not of traditional materials but of copper, which over a period of time, and as Albery had duly anticipated, turned into a very striking shade of bright green.
A keen swimmer for the whole of her life, both in the sea and in the local river at Farningham, in later years Albery took up body surfing on the north Cornish coast with great enthusiasm.
Although eventually funds did not actually permit any works to go ahead, Albery at one stage drew up (entirely free of charge) extremely sensitive and innovative and typically public-spirited architectural designs to create a Community Space within or near the Bell Tower of her local church, The Church of St Peter & St Paul's, Farningham, Kent (which was and still is a Grade 1 Listed Building) (constructed between the years 1225 and 1245).
Always interested and well-read in literary matters, and with an extensive private library of her own, Albery was a long-standing and enthusiastic supporter of the local Sevenoaks Poetry Society.
At the end of each calendar year, it was her practice to add up her earned and private income, to deduct her annual and relatively modest outgoings and expenses, and then to give the entire surplus to charity.