Mary Anning campaigner plans statue of notable Dorset woman

Hundreds of people turned out to see the unveiling of the Mary Anning statue in 2022

Campaigners who successfully fundraised for a statue of palaeontologist Mary Anning are inviting suggestions for a new sculpture featuring a woman.

Anya Pearson co-ordinated the campaign which saw Anning's statue unveiled in Lyme Regis, Dorset, in 2022.

She is now launching a similar campaign to celebrate another woman - whose identity is yet to be decided - with links to the county town of Dorchester.

Ms Pearson says women are under-represented in public art.

Her Dorchester "Sheroes" campaign has already drawn up a shortlist of seven potential candidates, including 20th-Century novelist and LGBTQ+ pioneer Sylvia Townsend Warner and 19th-Century art writer Lucy Baxter.

Prof Alice Roberts backed a crowdfunding appeal for the statue

Ms Pearson, who lives in Dorchester, is asking the public to submit their suggestions before residents vote for who they want immortalised in bronze.

She said: "I told myself 'never again' after the five-year-long campaign to get Mary Anning her statue in Lyme Regis, but I have one last statue in me."

She says the statues in Dorchester currently depict "six men, one dog, a queen and a horse" and there are no "non-royal depictions of any remarkable Dorset women".

The project is being supported by Mark Chutter, chairman and academic director of The Thomas Hardy Society.

The Sheroes shortlist:

• Sylvia Townsend Warner - Novelist, poet, and LGBTQ+ pioneer who lived with her partner Valentine Ackland in Frome Vauchurch and Chaldon Herring.

• Tola - An 11th-century landowner who, along with her husband, Orc, founded the abbey at Abbotsbury.

• The Dorset Button Makers - From 1622 to 1850 the button industry influenced the lives of hundreds of women in Dorset.

• Lucy Emily Baxter - An art writer who lived from 1837 to 1902, chiefly writing under the pseudonym of Leader Scott.

• Mary Mullet Moule - In the 1800s, alongside her husband the Rev Henry Moule, she worked with the poor during the cholera epidemic in Mill Street, Fordington, to provide better sanitation.

• Sarah Eldridge - In 1837, she created and ran a brewery in Dorchester with her husband, Charles. Following his death in 1846, she continued to run the business independently.

• Hannah Gifford - A teacher at a free school in the 1600s. The town paid for her salary, and she educated dozens of poor children.

Source: Dorchester Sheroes