Vera Brittain

(1893-1970)

Brampton Park, Newcastle Under Lyme, Staffordshire

It is 8th August – high summer – but there is an air of autumn in the park where this statue is set, as if the trees and plants have had enough of dry hot days and have begun to shed the odd leaf in preparation for darker days.

Vera Brittain was born in Newcastle Under Lyme.  She began English Literature studies at Oxford but as the First World War broke out she signed up as a Voluntary Aid Detachment.  Affected by the loss of loved ones during this time she became involved in the pacifist movement and her writing reflected her thoughts on the futility and tragedy of war.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/vera-mary-brittain

Is this a statue of Vera Brittain?  The nurse on the bench is a memorial to all women who lost loved ones in war but it is a fitting tribute to Brittain and beautifully crafted.

The statue, together with Brittain’s prose on the paving, captures the essence of suffering.  The downward sorrowful gaze of the figure looks down at the note,’The King commands me to assure you of the true sympathy of His Majesty and The Queen in your sorrow’.

The paving reads:-

‘I sat in a tree-shadowed walk called The Brampton and meditated on the War. 

It was one of those shimmering autumn days when every leaf and flower seemed to scintillate with light, and I found it very hard to believe that not far away men were being slain ruthlessly….

It is impossible, I concluded, to find any satisfaction in the thought of the destruction of men, whether they be English, French, German or anything else, seems a crime to the whole march of civilisation.’

Vera Brittain, 1914, from Testament of Youth, 1933.

The park is lovely.  It holds a Museum, Shop and Café and a retro 1987 toilets!  But make sure you rest, and take a seat with the Lady in the Park.

Sculptor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Edwards_(sculptor)

Virginia Woolf

1882-1941

Bust – Tavistock Square, London WC1H

Statue and bench – Richmond Riverside TW9

“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman”

Woolf is a writer best known for works such as Mrs Dalloway (1925), To The Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928) and A Room of One’s Own (1929). 

The sculpture sits on Richmond Riverside.  Woolf was troubled with mental illness for much of her life, leading to her suicide by drowning in the river Ouse, but the sculptor Laury Dizengremel has captured her in happier times and from accounts she enjoyed her time in Richmond where, with her husband, she founded the publishing house Hogarth Press.

The bust in Tavistock Square is cast from a 1931 sculpture by Stephen Tomlin (1901–1937). Unveiled in 2004 it sits in the square where Woolf lived (at number 52) between 1924 and 1939 continuing to write and run Hogarth Press.

Dame Louisa Brandreth Aldrich-Blake

(1865 – 1925)

Tavistock Square, London WC1H

“The path of the just is as the shining light”

Fourth statue out of 128 and still on day one, I’m already starting to feel a little overwhelmed by the task of visiting more statues, as dates, professions and skills are already mingling in my mind.

Born in Chingford, Essex,  Louisa would go on to be one of the first British women to enter the world of modern medicine and the first to obtain the degree of Master of Surgery.

Public Statues and Sculptures Association website tells us she was also a skilled boxer and cricketer https://pssauk.org/woman/test/ so you can imagine her UCAS application form to study medicine made her stand out as a good ‘all rounder’ candidate.

Pioneering in the treatment of cervical and rectal cancers, she later became the very first surgeon of either sex to perform operations for cervical and rectal cancer.  Sadly she was to die of cancer in 1925.

Tavistock Square also hosts a bust of Virgina Woolf – let’s visit her next!

Sculpture Arthur George Walker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_George_Walker

Design by Whitehall Cenotaph creator Edwin Lutyens   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Lutyens

Margaret MacDonald

Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2

“Took no rest from doing good”

I hovered around Margaret’s statue a while as there was a couple on the seat enjoying lunch (and possibly each other).  Their exit may have been quickened by my loitering, but it’s great to see folk interacting with history, art and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Margaret (1870-1911) was a social reformer.  She was involved in the suffragist movement and took part in voluntary social work supporting and highlighting the need for reform in women’s welfare. This led to her playing a key role in establishing the first trade schools for girls in 1904. A noticeboard in the park says she was devoted to her 6 children.  It seems she packed a lot in to her relatively short life. Do I feel a little envious of this? Sure I do.

At the front of the statue are the words, ‘This seat is placed here in memory of Margaret MacDonald who spent her life in helping others’.  The inscription at the rear reads, ‘She brought joy to those with whom and for whom she lived and worked. Her heart went out in fellowship to her fellow women & in love to the children of the people whom she served as a citizen and helped as a sister. She quickened faith and zeal in others by her life and took no rest from doing good.’

Margaret and her family lived on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, so it was fitting for her husband Ramsay Macdonald to design the statue and have it erected in the park after her death in 1914.  Margaret supported socialism and financed Ramsay’s early career in politics.  He went on to become Labour’s first Prime Minister. Sculptor: Richard R Goulden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reginald_Goulden

Sarah Siddons

Paddington Green, London W2

    Who knows what Sarah would have made of the view from her statue. She faces the Marylebone Flyover on Harrow Road but she sits gracefully in a leafy park which offers respite from the bustle of the dual carriageway into London.

    Welsh born in 1755 into a family of travelling theatre actors, her profession as a ‘tragedy’ actor meant she took on many high profile roles including Hamlet, but notably that of Lady Macbeth.  She had a successful career before retiring from stage in 1812.

    To the north of the park lies St Mary’s Churchyard where Sarah is buried.  I only find her tomb due to a google search as it is worn and neglected.  Protected with fencing, and erased through time, it is difficult to read the inscription.  Before taking a photo I dutifully remove a plastic coke bottle from one of the vertical spikes surrounding the stone.  Sarah appears to have been long forgotten here, but at least a statue keeps the memory of her alive.

    Mary Seacole

    St Mary’s Terrace, London W2

      Mary turns out to be a surprise find on my way to my first ‘official’ statue…

      Part of three steel portraits, Mary stands with scientist Alan Turing and author Michael Bond (Paddington Bear creator) and was voted for by local people as part of Sustrans’ Portrait Bench 2007 campaign https://www.sustrans.org.uk/.  Assuming Sustrans has more portraits, I could be visiting much more than the original 128 women statues listed by the UK Public Statues of Women list https://pssauk.org/women/.

      Born in 1805, Mary was a business woman who went on to study diseases and nursed in various countries.  At the outbreak of the Crimean war, she was refused a place in the effort to care for the wounded, so she paid her own way and helped first hand on the battlefields.  She returned destitute and died relatively unknown to those outside of Crimean war.  Until recently, history has largely ignored her work, particularly in the light of Florence Nightingale whose military hospital was stationed hundreds of miles from the frontline. https://www.maryseacoletrust.org.uk/

      Mary is also honoured with another statue in London, but more of that later.

      Starting statues

      It started with an article in The Week Junior magazine heralding the unveiling of Dorset’s Mary Anning Statue. https://www.maryanningrocks.co.uk/press. A sidebar stated, ‘In the UK, there are 82 statues of men named John and just 128 of named women’.

      Only 128?? I could visit all of them! But initial enthusiasm for a new project soon turned to dissatisfaction. There were so few women statues that it was, in actual fact, feasible to visit them all.
      So who are the 128 immortalised women? What does it take for a woman to get a statue of herself? Money? Influence? Passion for a cause?
      I’m ashamed to say I was struggling to recognise some of the names when I started the research, but that was all part of the journey – learning more about women that have played a special part in our history.

      So I have given myself a year to visit all of them to give them the recognition they deserve and to learn more about these special women.
      The start date is 29th July 2022. Please join me on this journey! Who knows, hopefully by the end of July 2023, the number of named women statues may be more than 128…..

      The keen eyed amongst you will know that the above picture is nothing to do with Mary Anning. It is pilot Amy Johnson who I visited in Hull. I love her gaze and besides, I’ve yet to meet Mary Anning…

      https://www.instagram.com/womenstatuesuk/