1) Methodist Church, Castle Street                              Charlotte Bergen & Mrs Webster, 1820s.              

They stood on upturned soap boxes on Castle Street passionately  defending their beliefs for hours on end, whatever the weather. They set up a women’s refuge in what was then a squalid and dangerous neighbourhood. Their determination to continue, despite threats of violence, led to the establishment of this church.                                                            

See if you can imagine what Charlotte Bergen and Mrs   Webster’s lives would have been like on a daily basis.

 

2)The Fry Art Gallery, Castle Street                     Sheila Robinson (1925–1988).                                                 

Robinson was a protegee of Edward Bawden, a famous artist from the Great Bardfield community of artists.  She assisted him with his famous mural in the Lion and Unicorn Pavilion for the Festival of Britain at South Bank, London in 1951.  She married the artist Bernard Cheese with whom she had two children, one of them the artist Chloe Cheese.  After her children left home and she had divorced She moved to a cottage on The Common in Saffron Walden. The RCA created the Sheila Robinson Drawing Prize in her honour.  To be a woman and a mother and to continue working full-time as an artist as the breadwinner was then quite radical.
Imagine what it might have been like to live in this  community of artists.  Imagine them having a supper together. What is it like? Try to describe it.

 

3) Side cut through from Castle Street to St Mary’s Church: Dame Joanne Bradbury (1450-1530).         

Widowed twice, Bradbury was extremely wealthy with considerable influence, her 2nd husband was Lord Mayor of London, she owned significant property in her own right and had many powerful  connections. As a result listed in the  London Book of Medieval Widows.

An exceptionally religious woman, believing that what you did in this life guaranteed your place in heaven. She therefore made substantial charitable donations including to St. Mary’s Church, where her brother was Vicar. 

She set up a grammar school in her own name, in the town on a site near the parish rooms. She was also one of several wealthy influential people who in 1513 petitioned Henry VIII to "redeem the customs and tolls" imposed on local trade and to reorganise how the town and market were run.  Historians argue that this was crucial in securing the town’s future.  She was clearly a powerhouse. That level of power,  ambition and money in a woman at that time, must have put a lot of people’s noses out of joint!      

Imagine her character and think about how she might have defended her position…..You could start with the words  ‘ he told me I couldn’t and I said….’

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4) King Street – Clinton Cards and the Card Factory, next to Phase Eight Joyce Turnball.                              

The original site of Harts Books; it was sold to the Turnbull    family and Jack Turnball, a conscientious objector, ran it for a number of years

His wife Joyce left school at 14 to join the war effort. During WW2 Joy and her husband bought an ambulance and during the raids in London provided medical attention.   Together they were responsible for providing the local         emergency ambulance service before the NHS was established in 1948. Joy was a home midwife, a nurse for the Women’s  Royal Voluntary Hospital Service at the local hospital and     established the town’s St John’s Ambulance Brigade,  later  becoming its superintendent.

When they struggled to get support after the birth of their disabled child, she established the town’s branch of Mencap, where local people could hire specialist equipment and access practical support and eventually creating a dedicated center for this in Jubilee Gardens.  She had to fight considerable           opposition, as the government at that time believed support for disabled people was not essential.  The center ran until 2009. The couple continued loaning equipment to families, from their garage space.  She was  honoured for her contribution to the town by the House of Commons.  She was described as    someone who made “quiet powerful waves.”
Try writing a poem for Joy, using the phrase ‘some people work in the background, a pair of hands’

 

5)Quaker Meeting House, High Street
There are many Quaker women who were radical beyond their time, but only scanty records exist. The Quaker ethos is “a meeting of people from different lifestyles and backgrounds.”  The  Quakers quite literally built this town, paying for the street     paving, the library, the water fountain, the school – you name it!

Quaker women made significant contribution in large numbers to the suffragette movement, to improving working conditions and encouraging racial equality. The Brightwen sisters lived in a house on London Road.  They founded The Negro Friend Society in the 1830s. Petitioning, campaigning, producing pamphlets and goods to sell to raise funds.

A local woman who was caretaker of the Quaker meeting house, took part in the Greenham Common protests and was imprisoned for not paying the fine imposed on her for attending.  This 1980’s protest at RAF Molesworth ran parallel and in partnership with the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common. Both protests were trying to stop US cruise missiles being stationed there.  The Greenham Common protests were of seminal     importance to the peace movement and the changing nature of protest itself.
Think about protesting….what would you care enough about to passionately protest and risk your life for.

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6) Library, Olive Cook (1912- 2002).                             

Passionate, intelligent, forthright, dedicated and disciplined, fun to be around but probably also a traditionalist and a self-confessed elitist! The writer Olive Cook is best known for her work with her husband, the photographer Edwin Smith.  Together they published books exploring English architecture and way of life, with his images and her writings. They also produced a book called The Stansted Affair in response to attempts to expand the airport, which they were strongly against.

In her working career she held many professional positions, including at Chatto and Windus, The National Gallery, the Carnegie Institute and was a visiting tutor in painting and architecture at Denman College from 1956.

When the artist Edward Bawden moved to the town as a widower, Olive Cook was one of his closest companions and in the 1980s helped to establish the Fry Art Gallery.  She has been described by some as Edwin’s muse, but she was more than that, earning money to support them with her own creativity and provided stability for Edwin.  She worked to establish an arts center in the town based in the library and worked to get      notable local buildings listed, including Barclays, the hospital, the library and the council offices. It would have been a very different town without her efforts.
Stand with your back to the Library, look at the Market Square, whether it is market day or not, think about it in her voice and use her favourite word which was ‘adorable.

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7)Town Hall Clara Rackham (1975-1966)                             

Rackham lived in Cambridge, but when she stood as the Labour parliamentary candidate for Saffron Walden in 1935, she was the first female candidate in Essex. She lost to RA Butler. She was a suffragette and magistrate and had worked as a WW1 factory inspector. She established the first family planning clinic in Cambridge and campaigned for the 40 hour working week.  She was a pioneering broadcaster, one of the first females to be heard on the air waves on BBC Radio. Her commitment to the world of working women was huge.  Described as one of the women who got us to where we are now. She regularly attended meetings in the Town Hall.                                                

Imagine her about to go on air, knowing she is one of the first women to be on the radio. How would she have psyched herself up and given herself confidence.

 

8)10 Emson Close, The Walden Local Offices
Harriet Shaw Weaver (1876-1961)                                                

A radical political activist and magazine editor, supporter of women’s suffrage and socialist, later communist.  Form a wealthy family, She wanted to go to university but her father didn’t believe there was any value in it for her. This spurred her on and she funded and established the New Freewoman’s       magazine, a feminist magazine which later became “The      Egotist”. The journal serialised James Joyce’s ‘portrait of an artist as a young man’,  praised by HG Wells but  described by the editor of the Sunday Express as ‘the most famously obscene book in ancient and modern literature.’  She continued to support Joyce commenting on his manuscripts, correcting his proofs, bank rolling him and became executor of his literary estate and caring for his daughter after his death. She later  published Ulysses. Later in life she became a communist, selling copies of the Daily Worker in the street.  She died in 1961, bequeathing her letters and papers to the British Museum. Her life was dedicated to protecting writers from censorship.

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9)Saffron Walden Museum: Radical Women Display Your final stop, pop in and see some artifacts exploring the theme of radical women in our dedicated display.