Somewhere, somehow, I hear that a church near the east coast is running a project replacing crumbled stone carvings with new ones, showcasing 9 pioneering women. I could research and write about them myself, but when I arrive an exhibition captures all you need to know…
So you don’t have to endure my jaunty phone camera angles, the exhibition also features plaster casts of the carvings. Phew. The initial plan for one carving to be Queen Elizabeth was changed to Libby Lane, the first female Bishop in the myself, Church of England.
When I find Floella’s bust on the University of Exeter’s campus, I’m instantly irked by the tarpaulin behind spoiling the pictures. And then I realise I can just take a shot from a different angle and see it another way. Let that be a lesson in life right there.
People of a certain generation will be familiar with Floella. She was a prominent figure in children’s TV around the 70’s and 80’s in Playaway and Playschool, but her CV extends far beyond presenting, into film, campaigning and writing, becoming a peer in the House of Lords in 2010.
Born in Trinidad, she came to the UK at the age of 10 experiencing culture shock adjusting to British life and the adversities she faced. Studying at night school for A-levels, she auditioned for acting roles and, as the saying goes, the rest is history.
In 2006, she was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Exeter for contributions to the United Kingdom and served for ten years. The bust was subsequently unveiled a year later with the plague reading:
Consideration ~ put yourself in the place of others and show empathy and respect. Never be judgmental. Contentment ~ don’t be jealous and envious but be satisfied with what you have. That way you are open and ready to receive what is right for you. Confidence ~ Be a decent human being, feel worthy and like the person you are. Give and love unconditionally and more will come back to you.
Author and poet, Mary wrote 6 novels as well as poems, short stories and nature essays. Growing up and spending most of her time around Shropshire she gained inspiration from her countryside surroundings with her work centring around her home county. The Mary Webb Society states, ‘She developed an extraordinary perception for minute detail in nature and this is reflected in the richness of her poetry and prose.’
As most things happen around late 19th/early 20th century; things weren’t always easy. She developed Graves’ Disease (a thyroid disorder) at the age of 20, which was to cause her ill health for much of her life and lead to her premature death. She became very self-conscious due to the disfiguring features of the disease and began to retreat into her own solitary world, taking solace in writing.
Her first book was published in 1916, The Golden Arrow, but her most famous work is Precious Bane (1924). Her health deteriorated soon after this, leaving a novel unfinished when she died aged 46.
The back of Mary’s bust reveals a pile of her books and is situated outside Shrewsbury Library. Nice touch.
There’s no doubt that a lot of my statue visits are poignant, giving me pause to reflect and think about the course of life and how it can change so easily. With my write ups I normally scout around the internet, cross referencing and generally getting lost before throwing a bit of history together in the hope it honours the woman cited. Here, I am directly taking the text from pssauk.org website (Public Statues and Sculpture Association) where I originally gleam information on statues and made my list of the women to visit. The write up captures Katie so beautifully it would be wrong to write otherwise.
‘Katie attended Malvern College from 1994-99 and then St Edmund Hall, Oxford, but died tragically young of a brain haemorrhage at the age of twenty-five. She was a volunteer at a Quest Overseas project in Peru, where she taught sport, art, music and theatre to the children in Villa Maria, a shanty town in Lima. She was passionate about the project and following her death a fund established in her name was used to provide better living conditions for disadvantaged children and single mothers in that community.
A keen sportswoman, she is depicted in this statue as a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl Katie playing Netball. The memorial statue was commissioned by her parents, Kevan and Penny, to stand in her old school.’
On the day I visit there are two quotes tied to her feet from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation:
‘There are two ways of spreading light: be the candle or the mirror that reflects it’
Edith Wharton
‘Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world’.
Desmond Tutu
The inscription on Katie’s plinth is a quote from Abraham Lincoln:
‘In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years’.
The second statue in the Monumental Welsh Women campaign depicts Elaine’s achievements as screenwriter and revolutionary evolutionary theorist. She sits atop an ocean wave that mutates into a sheaf of her writings, fluttering away from her.
Born in nearby Pontypridd and educated at Oxford (studying English), she returned to Wales, settling in Mountain Ash and had a successful career as a screenwriter, but was perturbed by scholarly opinion on evolution, favouring Alister Hardy’s ‘aquatic ape theory’ which suggested the evolution of humans was more likely to be from water rather than fighting in the savannah. From here the ideas and process were developed into her own writings and she went on to write several books on the matter, alongside her television work.
Royal Fort House Gardens, Tyndall Avenue, University of Bristol
It’s not usual to start with death, but this is where Henrietta’s legacy begins. Her cause of passing was a particularly aggressive form of cancer and during her treatment a section of her tumour was taken and sent to a laboratory. Her family and indeed Henrietta at the time were unaware of this. But there was something unique in Henrietta’s samples. Unlike previous human cells, Henrietta’s continued to grow and divide outside the human body, making them the first human immortal cell line. This meant that they could be kept indefinitely and thus play a vital role in science.
Henrietta remains, to many, an unknown contributor to worldwide research. So unique were the cells and so crucial to Biomedical science, they were attributed their own name – HeLa cells (after the first letters of her name) and have been pioneering in medical advances including the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, Sars and COVID-19.
Behind all this, let’s not forget there was a family orientated woman, described as hard-working and loving. One of ten children, she went on to have five of her own, leaving a young family when she passed at just 31 years old.
In this creation, Bristol artist Helen Wilson-Roe heralds the first public statue of a Black woman made by a Black woman in the UK. Members of Henrietta’s family were present at the unveiling and now involved in keeping Henrietta’s legacy alive.
Henrietta’s cells survive today in countless laboratories, helping to continue to make groundbreaking discoveries in medicine.
Viewed as one of Northern Ireland’s leading artist, sculptor Ross Wilson (see Amy Carmichael) is also the creator of this statue of Ella Pirrie.
Born Isabella Barbour Pirrie, Ella was the first nurse in the Belfast Union Workhouse Infirmary (now the Belfast City Hospital). Pirrie’s role was transformative and her efforts led to the establishment of a formal nursing training program in Belfast, despite facing significant resistance and challenges. In 1894, Pirrie moved to Edinburgh to become the first matron at the Deaconess Hospital, Edinburgh (1894-1914), a training school for nurses. Her tenure there was marked by significant advancements in nursing education, including the establishment of a community and district nursing department. By the end of her service, over 140 nurses had been trained, with many pursuing international missions.
Nightingale was a mentor for many years, writing several letters to her in Belfast. The statue shows her holding a letter from Florence Nightingale dated 1 October 1885, which reads ‘…You have already done great things. You must be the nucleus of hope for a goodly future of trained nursing staff at Belfast Infirmary …’.
Despite her resignation in 1914 due to health issues, Pirrie continued her work as the superintendent of the Deaconess Rest Home in Edinburgh until her death in 1929.
Ella is the last of three named statues in Northern Ireland and I’m glad I’ve made an early trip to tick the nation off my list as at this point I’ve still got about 100 more to go in my journey.
A year later, Belfast erects two new women statues and I’m duty bound to do the trip all over again. Damn you feminism.
Hamilton Road Presbyterian Church, Bangor, Northern Ireland
Growing up in Belfast, Amy was troubled by the plight of mill girls (named, ‘Shawlies’) who were largely overlooked by the church. She set up a Sunday class and, in 1887 she and her family opened a church for the girls to attend. Now called the Welcome Evangelical Church it is still operating in west Belfast.
In adulthood Amy became a Christian missionary, moving to South India in 1895.
There, she opened an orphanage rescuing hundreds of children from being exploited or sold into prostitution or slavery. In 1901 she founded a mission in Dohnavur, and the Fellowship remains in existence to this day facilitating nurseries, a school and a hospital. Amy served in India for 55 years earning the name, ‘Mother to the Motherless’. In that time she wrote 35 books about her work as a missionary.
The sculpture was unveiled in 2017, the 150th anniversary of Carmichael’s birth and captures her as a 10-year-old girl. Sculptor Ross Wilson also crafted a ‘Shawlie’ statue, unveiled in 2010 which sits on the junction between Crumlin Road and Cambrai Street (where the Welcome Church resides) in Belfast.
Mary Peters Track, Upper Malone Road, Belfast BT9 5PR
In 1964 Mary finished 4th at the Olympics and secured 9th place in 1968. In the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, Mary won the gold medal in the women’s pentathlon, narrowly beating the local favourite, West Germany’s Heidi Rosendahl by 10 points, setting a world record score.
After her victory, death threats were phoned into the televised channel (the BBC), but Peters insisted she would return home to Belfast*. She was greeted by fans and a band at the airport and paraded through the city streets but was not allowed back to her home for three months and, despite work offers worldwide, she insisted on remaining in Northern Ireland.
She represented Northern Ireland at every Commonwealth Games between 1958 and 1974. In these games she won 2 gold medals for the pentathlon, plus a gold and silver medal for the shot put.
In 1975 Mary established a charitable Sports Trust (now known as the Mary Peters Trust) to support talented young sportsmen and women, both able-bodied and disabled, from across Northern Ireland in a financial and advisory capacity. The trust has made a large number of awards and has a list of well-known alumni.
I visit Northern Ireland’s premier athletics track on the outskirts of Belfast which is named after her and duly take pictures of me standing beside her at the moment when her gold medal is awarded. I have a choice of 2nd and 3rd place as the number 1 spot is taken. Touchingly, the artist John Sherlock offered the sculpture as a gift to the city of Belfast, its people and the future generation of athletes training at the track.
*Known as, ‘The Troubles’, Northern Ireland lived with around 30 years of deep conflict between those wanting to be part of Great Britain and those who wanted to be part of Ireland, with the boundaries between Protestant and Catholic sectors.
(1890-1980) West Cliff, near sunken garden, Whitby
Originally working as a nurse in World War 1, after suffering bronchial problems, doctors advised Dora to seek sea air to help. So, she bought a cottage in Whitby, where her new found passion for fishing thrived. During WW2, Dora fished, fine-tuned her navigational skills and was adept at handling long lines and crab pots. She qualified as a skipper and acted as a pilot for boats through the dangerous minefields. Despite the initial scepticism of her fellow fisher folk, Dora quickly proved she was a skilled and talented worker and became affectionately known as Skipper Dora.
Dora’s impressive catches often made it to local and national newspapers and, along with her brother James, were renowned for their ability to catch Atlantic bluefin tuna (known as ‘tunny’), believed to be one of the strongest fish in the sea. However, the popularity of tunny fishing dropped off dramatically during the Second World War, and the practice eventually led to a significant reduction in local herring and mackerel stocks, resulting in the disappearance of blue fin tuna from the coastal waters.
After the war, Dora and her brothers James and Ronald created a fish company to buy fish from local fishermen at a reasonable price and sell it at a loss to assist struggling families without them suffering a loss of pride, an act which saved much of the town from poverty in difficult times. This was a secret kept until she died in 1980. She was also heralded for her rescue efforts and joined other fisher folk in relentless aid missions when boats ran into trouble at sea.
During her lifetime she wrote three books, one about her experiences in WW1 and two about fishing in Whitby: They Labour Mightily and Freemen of the Sea.
Skipper Dora stands as one of the sculptures of Whitby’s Walk with Heritage trail. Artist Emma Stothard features, get this, 6 females out of 9 sculptures! The other women sculptures are representative of women, so not named, but they deserve a space here. Enjoy!
Fishwife – West side of Swing Bridge next to railingsGansey Knitter – Opposite junction of Skinner Street and FlowergateHerring Girls – Bandstand
WomenstatuesUK 