The Christmas Tree Festival 2019 was the first public outing of Her Salisbury Story. Soroptimist International of Salisbury had decorated a tree at the festival at Saint Thomas’s Church for the last two years and thought it would be a good idea to use this year‘s tree to begin to raise awareness of our new project Her Salisbury Story.
We decided to decorate the tree with gift tags with pictures of Salisbury women past and present who had achieved something of note in their lives. The list included writers, musicians, women in the church and philanthropists among others. We also had a box of little silver Christmas trees that people could hang on the tree themselves having written the name of somebody they wanted to celebrate. The plan is to record and follow up on at least some of these names.
This led to a craft evening taking place where volunteers cut, pasted and stamped the labels to make the decorations.
Our research into women of Salisbury was at a very early stage when we decorated the tree so many of the women that we would include now were undiscovered by us at the time.
See below the picture for a list of women included on the tree.
Name | Brief Details |
Dorothy L Sayers | Author, Godolphin school, Wimsey at Cathedral Hotel |
Elizabeth Goldolphin | Founded Godolphin School |
Dorothy Brooke | Founder of the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital in Cairo 1934 |
Edith Oliver | Author, Mayoress of Wilton |
Ela of Salisbury | Countess of Salisbury founder of Laycock Abbey |
Agnes Bottenham | Founder of Trinity Almshouses |
Eleanor of Aquitaine | Queen of England ( Henry ll) imprisoned at old Sarum |
Mary Herbert | Alchemist and hostess. Wilton House was like a college, there were so many learned and ingenious persons. She was the greatest patroness of wit and learning of any lady in her time.” |
Joan Popley | Gave properties in London for the relief of the poor in Salisbury |
Dorothy Lawrence | An English journalist, who posed as an infantryman in order to report from the front line during World War 1. |
Rosemary Squires | A professional singer worked with Ted Heath, Geraldo, Cyril Stapleton and other big band conductors |
Cornelia Funke | Wrote the children’s book Ghost Knight set in Salisbury Cathedral School |
Sarah Mullally | Formerly Cannon Treasurer at the cathedral now Bishop of London |
Edith Hulse | Established the Hulse Clinic for Child Welfare at the Infirmary in 1924 became the first woman Mayor of Salisbury in 1927 |
Minette Batters | First woman president of the NFU |
Annie Moberly | First principal of St Hughs College Oxford |
Barbara Townsend | Artist lived all her life at Monpesson House |
Geraldine Symons | Children’s author wrote a memoir of life in The Close before and during the great war |
Susan Howatch | Author wrote the Starbridge series set in Salisbury |
June Osborne | Previously Dean of Salisbury now Bishop of Llandaff |
Salome Pelly | Daughter of Bishop Wordsworth. Doctor (Crane St Practice), philanthropist, socialist and artist |
Florence Nightingale | The founder of modern nursing. she had close links with the Salisbury Infirmary through her work with Sidney Herbert and Edith Joanna Bonham-Carter |
Millicent Garrett Fawcett | Millicent was a frequent visitor to Salisbury where she inspired local suffragists including her sister-in-law Maria Fawcett who worked locally for the ‘Society for the Education of Girls’ |