About Us

I suppose The Acorn Gallery was born before its time… for it was a dream long before it became reality! 

John and I met in 1986 whilst I was cycling around the Yorkshire Dales, John was Assistant Warden at Hawes Youth Hostel where I stayed a night... 

After more than a little banter over a pack of cards we exchanged addresses and I invited him to my 18th Birthday Party - rather forward of me but we got on really well and discovered that John would be 21 the day before I was 18 and the date of my party was his 21st Birthday! (It felt like a sign!) 

Six weeks later and it was the night of my party... and John proposed! I turned him down, things like that didn't happen to me... but six weeks later I accepted! 

John & I were married four years later in 1990 and by this time we both lived and worked in York. 

In 1992 John started his own business and I joined him in 1993 after the birth of our daughter, Emily. Our son Isaac, came along three years later.

Fast forward ten years... in 2003 we once again found ourselves in a Youth Hostel, this time in Epping with friends on a Hire-a-Hostel weekend. 

We had spent a few hours on babysitting duty whilst the other grown-ups sought refuge in the pub, so when they returned it was our turn to seek solace... 

It was 5pm and pouring with rain as we drove into Epping high street... an art gallery was still open with bright lights and an offer of shelter so we went in... 

We lost ourselves wandering and admiring the work on display and amongst the sculptures was a pair of bronze elephants, head to head, resting on entwined trunks... I fell in love! 

I have always loved elephants and these stole my heart... They were £295, a lot of money for us at the time but as we left the gallery I found tears rolling down my face and I couldn't bear to leave without them...

I decided to break into some money left to me by my Grandma, it was a purchase I knew she would have approved of... and so in the last minutes of that wet afternoon in Epping we bought them! 

It was six more months before we went into another gallery but a lovely Alexander Millar print found its way home for our anniversary and so it began! Art became our not-so-secret passion! 

We collected and loved so many pieces that we were always being told we should start our own art gallery! 

The idea was born but it was really only a dream… until one day we sat on a bench in picturesque Pocklington, eating sandwiches with the kids whilst our caravan was pitched at South Lea… and there before us was a little shop, empty and unloved… in need of some serious TLC and calling out for us to make it beautiful! 

So we did! 

We contacted the landlord, signed the lease and then we set to and stripped and painted and re-floored and re-fitted the shop to make it our very own art space… 

We'd had a mixed reception back at the Youth Hostel when we proudly showed off our elephant sculpture but we knew it felt right... and in 2007, as we opened The Acorn Gallery, we knew this was where we were meant to be...