The British painter William Stokes Hulton (1852-1921) and his wife Costanza (‘Zina’) Mazini (1863-1939) had two daughters: Gioconda Mary (1887-1940) and (Edith) Teresa (1890-1972), known to family and friends as ‘Bimbele’ or ‘Bim’. The family lived in Venice, Italy, from 1897 until 1907, with a brief interlude in Munich from 1903 to 1905.

During the First World War, Teresa worked as a Red Cross nurse in Italy, receiving the Croce di Guerra for her work. She married Thomas Henry Noel-Hill, 8th Baron Berwick of Attingham (1877-1947) in June 1919 in Florence. Thomas, who served with the Shropshire Yeomanry during the war, had inherited Attingham Park in Shropshire in 1897. The couple spent many years restoring the house and when Thomas died in 1947, he left the house and estate to the National Trust in his will. Teresa continued to live there until her death in a road accident in 1972.

Costanza’s mother was the author and translator Linda Mary White (1836–1915), who married firstly the silk merchant Vincenzo Constanzo Mazini and secondly the Italian historian and politician Pasquale Villari (1827-1917).