women statues – WomenstatuesUK

Pocahontas (Rebecca Rolfe)

(1595-1617)

Graveyard of St George’s Church, Gravesend, Kent, England

Pocahontas was a native American who intervened, at the age of 12, to save the life of colony settler Captain John Smith. She later met Englishman James Rolfe who arrived in the newly formed Jamestown colony in 1610. They married and travelled to England, where she changed her name to Rebecca Rolfe and converted to Christianity.

She died in 1617, around the age of 23, while making a return voyage to Virginia with her husband and son Thomas. The ship would have stopped in Gravesend as the last place for fresh food and water for the journey. She was buried St George’s Church, but the original building was destroyed by fire in 1727 so her exact resting place is unknown.

Folk will no doubt be familiar with the Disney interpretation of Pocahontas’s story. In reality, her act of heroism opened her, and many other native Americans, up to new diseases that their immune systems could not fight – her cause of death in England could have been from any number of ills at the time, from smallpox to flu.

Rolfe, continued his journey back to Virginia to work his tobacco farm, leaving their son Thomas with family, believing that without his mother he was unlikely to survive the arduous journey across the Atlantic. He never saw Thomas again but knew that his son had been brought up safely in England, married, and had children of his own. The actor Edward Norton and Edith Wilson, wife of America’s President Woodrow Wilson, are amongst those who claim to be descended from Thomas and thus from Pocahontas herself.

The Grade II listed statue was gifted by the then governor of Virginia in 1958 and is a cast of the 1907 sculpture by William Ordway Partridge on display in Jamestown, Virginia.

Ethel Smyth

(1858-1944)

Duke Court, Duke Street, Woking, Surrey, England

Ever get the feeling that you are underachieving? The statue’s plaque boasts Ethel as a composer, author, sportswoman and suffragette. To be frank, it’s exhausting reading the list of it all.

Ethel wrote 6 operas in her lifetime, as well as other musical compositions in what was a very male dominated world in music. She was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and it wasn’t until over a hundred years later that another woman composer took her place.

Ethel composed the suffragette anthem, ‘The March of the Women’ and was a leading figure in the movement in the 1910’s. A friend of Emmeline Pankhurst, her house was used as a ‘safe house’ for campaigners. She loved sport and had a passion for golf. Her sporting prowess came in handy while teaching women how to throw stones. Along with many prominent suffragettes, she spent time in prison for the cause (this could be where the sport of ‘throwing stones at windows’ plays a part) and organised sports with fellow prisoners in her time at Holloway jail.

Sadly, Ethel began to lose her hearing in her 50’s, becoming completely deaf later in life. At this stage, she developed her writing and went on to publish 10 books in the last 25 years of her life.

Jane Austen

(1775 –1817)

St Nicholas Church, Chawton,
Market Square, Basingstoke and
Grounds of Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire, England

St Nicholas Church, Gosport Road, Chawton, Hampshire

Writing at the end of the 18^th century, her six novels have been translated and circulated prolifically. Her first books were published anonymously when she was around 35 years of age with her last two published posthumously. Most of you will at least know the name of her most famous works, ‘Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Emma’, and ‘Pride and Prejudice’.

And what of her statues? You may recall that Florence Nightingale holds the record for the most decorated woman in statues, but Jane is having a resurgence, some 200 years after her death. It seems her work is appreciated now more than ever.

Up first – St Nicholas Church in Chawton where Jane attended services in her time in the village between 1809-1817. Her gaze looks over a picturesque grazing field to where she lived. This is not the original statue, but a maquette cast and based on the original in Basingstoke, where Jane would have attended dances near the Market Square.

Alas, when I hit Basingstoke it is market day, but not the market of Jane’s day. Here I find her sandwiched between a bunch of crates and a dumper bin. Poor Jane.

Things improve little (with me and Jane) with a move to Winchester where Jane spent her final days. Unveiled in 2025 to mark the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, I find Jane fenced outside the annual Christmas market as a backdrop, somewhat obscuring the cathedral’s inner close housing. Christmas market foibles are a speciality of mine when statue hunting it seems (don’t get me started on Belfast). On this occasion my friend is reprimanded by a security guard who appears out of nowhere to chastise him for touching the sculpture. Naughty!

Jane’s dedications don’t end here it seems – not far from Chawton a bust was unveiled just two months before my local visit but only discovered by me some 10 months later. Don’t fret. It’s on the list.

Fanny Wilkinson

(1855-1951)

Coronation Gardens, Southfields, London SW18 5ND

Fanny’s statuette adorns the renovated drinking fountain in one of 75 London parks that she designed.

In 1883 and after much persuasion, Fanny was the first and only woman to be accepted on a Landscape Gardening and Practical Horticulture course at the Crystal Palace School in Sydenham. A year later, she was elected as honorary gardener to the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association leading to a professional paid position two years later.

Fanny was also a suffragist, an activist in sanitary and political reform, and a supporter of women’s education and rights. In an interview in 1890 she said: “I certainly do not let myself be underpaid as many women do … I know my profession and charge accordingly, as all women should.”

The fountain was originally installed in 1904. Today, Fanny can be seen holding a plant above the tap, honouring not only her part in Coronation Gardens’ existence, but in recognition of her pioneering work as the first professional female landscape designer in Britain.

Margaret Noble – Sister Nivedita

(1867-1911)

Leopold Road and Lake Road in Wimbledon, London SW19 7HB United Kingdom

Irish born educator, writer and champion of Indian freedom, Margaret came to the UK at an early age and found a career in teaching, living in various towns and cities in working in education, all the while studying methods of enhancing the childhood learning and experience.

By 1891 she had settled in Wimbledon and opening a new independent school, emphasising child’s play at the core of early learning.

During this Margaret had slowly become disillusioned with the Christian faith and had a growing interest of other worldly religions. She met Indian Hindi philosopher and social reformer Swami Vivekananda in 1895, striking up a relationship that culminated in his call for her to travel to India to educate a population that was struggling in what was then British India. Swami recognised that education was at the heart of bringing people out of poverty and saw that Margaret was the woman to lead.

So, in 1898, Margaret travelled to India and immersed herself in the culture, faith and way of life of India, becoming known as Sister Nivedita – meaning, ‘the dedicated one’. She set up a school and travelled extensively raising awareness and getting help for her cause, promoting the importance of education particularly for women and girls. Often Margaret was met with refusal, but her classes grew, including women and girls of all ages learning practical skills. The 1899 plague epidemic in Calcutta challenged Margaret’s calling, but she embraced nursing and medical roles, inspiring others to volunteer and support others in need, all the while struggling to raise funds by touring lectures as well as her own writing to keep the school running in the face of mortality.

At the turn of the century Margaret was a fierce advocate for Indian independence, believing it to be the only way in which Indian and its people could prosper – a cause she dedicated herself to until her death in 1911.

This statue was made in Bengal and created by artist Nirjan De and sculptor Biswattanandaji. It is placed facing slightly south of east, towards Bengal. A similar statue stands in the Engineering and Science University there, hopefully not also serving as a bike park.

Ada Lovelace

(1815-1852)

Ergon House, Horseferry Road/Dean Ryle Street London SW1

Tricky to find and even trickier to capture on camera. Ada sits high on a building between Dean Ryle Street and Horseferry Road. In an age of perpetually looking down at smartphones it seems counterintuitive to look up, but there she stands, surveying London’s continually changing landscape.

Ada is best known as a mathematician and technology pioneer, at a time when few women entered those fields. She worked closely with Charles Babbage on the analytical engines —mechanical prototypes of the computer — and is sometimes credited as being the world’s first computer programmer.

Did you know??????? She is celebrated on the second Tuesday of every October, which has become known as Ada Lovelace Day.

The punchcards behind her are an early form of computer memory that would have been used with Babbage on the analytical engine had it been built. Apparently the cards contain two coded puzzles contributed by a team of international scientists. Clearly I’d be able to crack them if they weren’t so far away…..