We bet you think the next line would be ‘walks into a bar’, but this is actually the current landscape of statues displayed across Dorchester. Looking at the Southwest, including Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, there are only three full-size statues celebrating named women in a whopping 13,000 square kilometres of the UK. In addition, over 85% of statues in the UK are men, and only 3% are statues of women, with more statues of men called John than of all non-royal named women put together.
Seeing the importance of representation of statues in our landscapes to visualise our shared history, Dorchester Sheroes are on a quest to erect Dorchester’s first non-royal female statue and celebrate an overlooked shero from our past. Statues represent people we agree are significant, worthy and should be remembered, which is why making women an equal part of that experience is essential and demonstrates the values and beliefs celebrated with a publicly displayed piece of art reflect what the people of that town are choosing to remember and honour. This project aims to be a collaborative, community-led campaign that involves local schools and engages the public.
To do this, we need your help! We value your input on potential candidates for the statue, and once we have a shortlist, we want the community to have the opportunity to vote for their chosen shero to be immortalised in bronze. The Dorchester Joint Heritage Committee supports us in this process, and funding for this project will rely on the power of the people, with fundraising events and grant schemes playing a pivotal role.
Some key criteria for our Dorchester Shero are candidates that are real women, not fictional characters, who have lived predominantly in and around Dorchester within a preferred approximate 20-mile radius. We want a focus on celebrating uplifting and positive female role models, women with diverse backgrounds, with compelling Herstories, trailblazers that paved the way for others, and contributed to an impact on the county town.
Some of the amazing women we have on our list so far include the Dorset button makers (their combined efforts influenced the lives of hundreds of women across the whole of Dorset for more than 200 years), Sarah Eldridge (she created and ran a thriving brewery in Dorchester with her husband which on his death she, unusually for the time, continued to run the business independently), Marina Russell (a renowned Dorset singer of folk music from Upwey. Today recognised as one of England’s most important source singers and contributing to upwards of 350 songs), and Kate Godbehear (a local Suffragette and Mill Street Mission worker who worked for over 50 years within the community of Fordington and helped educate hundreds of underserved children in the area.)
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Dorset History Centre is pleased to support this new initiative within Dorchester. If you have any further queries about the project please contact the team at DorchesterSheroes@gmail.com
Find the whole list of criteria and Dorchester Sheroes, and follow us on their Facebook page @DorchesterSheroes
There are some noteworthy statues in Dorchester (Hardy, Barnes, the Dorset Shepherd, the Queen Mother) that have significance both locally and nationally. Not sure that the issue is so much the lack of statues of women but the maintenance of an appropriate focus on Dorset’s rich cultural heritage; that is, local people (men and women) and regionally significant events. This issue is best exemplified by the Elisabeth Frink sculptures on the site of the Icen Way gallows that have as their main focus the commemoration of seven Roman Catholic martyrs (none local) over a 55 year period, associated with aristocratic families, rather than of, for example, the 13 west Dorset/east Devon ‘rebels’ of the middling sort who were executed on one single day, 7 Sep 1685, following the Bloody Assizes – largely for their belief in a Protestant succession. The Discover Dorchester website, citing the plaque erected with the sculptures, (https://discoverdorchester.co.uk/place/elizabeth-frinks-martyrs-statue/) highlights that the sculptures were, ‘on the site of the gallows where Catholic martyrs were hanged in the 16th and 17th centuries. The memorial represents two martyrs facing Death, and commemorates all Dorset men and women who suffered for their faith and, in particular, seven known Catholics who were executed where the memorial now stands.’ As a Roman Catholic, could I suggest that there appears to have been an extraordinary sin of commission in the religiously biased statue design and tablet wording, perhaps derived from the undue influence of the Convent of St Genevieve in South Walks and Frinks’ own Catholicism, and an equally extraordinary sin of omission in failing to depict and mention the equally worthy, but Protestant and less socially romantic, Monmouth rebels. Perhaps we should redress these significant social, religious and cultural shortfalls related to some of Dorchester’s statuary before we move on to other areas? An appropriate memorial to the Monmouth rebels of Dorset seems to be well overdue – they were the bellwether for the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that initiated the chain of progressive liberalism and liberty for centuries to come. Just an idle thought.
Thank-you for your comment – we will pass it onto the team organising the campaign.