On a rather cold and showery May day, I met up with my best chum from university for our long awaited step back in time. Here she is with Mary Wollstonecraft.
We investigated Mary’s old stomping ground, Newington Green 1, with the wonderful app created by Scary Little Girls 2.
This eighteenth century feminist writer (mother of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein) was born in Spitalfields, London. Her father turned to drink after losing the family fortunes, and then scraped a living as a farmer in Essex, Yorkshire and Wales 2.
As a young woman, Mary along with with her close friend, the illustrator, Fanny Blood, ran a school for girls on Newington Green 2.
Mary got to know the local Unitarian minister and political radical, Dr Richard Price, and the local circle of dissenters. They attended Newington Green Unitarian Chapel, which stands on the corner to this day 2.
The Chapel has had strong ties to political radicalism for over 300 years, and is London’s oldest non conformist place of worship still in use. It was founded in 1708 by the English Dissenters, who had been gathering around the Green for at least half a century before that date. They were Protestants who had separated from the Church of England. They disagreed with the Church on many issues relating to faith, politics and the relationship between church and state.
Unitarians have no creed and accept you into their congregation whatever you do or do not believe. They have a strong tradition of political activism. They have taken part in almost every movement for social justice, in particular, the antislavery movement.
The primary school folded when Fanny got married, but there is a school on the site just off the Green, till this day.
After a spell as a Governess in Ireland, Mary was befriended by publisher Joseph Johnson who set her up with a job and lodgings. They published her ‘ A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ‘ (1792), one of the earliest feminist texts. It called for equal rights for women in terms of education and their place in society more generally. She said the latter kept women as either ‘domestic slaves’ or ‘alluring mistresses’ in a time when they were denied civil, political and sexual rights. She demanded ‘JUSTICE for one half of the human race’. 2
On the west side of Newington Green is the oldest surviving terrace in London. Built in 1658, the four buildings at 52-55 Newington Green have survived the Great Fire of London as well as two World Wars. 3
Dr Richard Price moved into no 54 in 1758. During the next few years, and no doubt due to his sympathies towards the American Revolution, he was visited by many of the American ‘founding fathers’ including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams.4
In 2020, a sculpture for Mary, by artist Maggi Hambling, went on display on Newington Green. Journalist, Bee Rowlatt, who wrote the fascinating book “In search of Mary’ led the campaign for the statue 5. It has proved controversial. I can not make my mind up about it.
Bee Rowlatt was chairwoman of the Mary on the Green campaign for a statue, and said: “Her ideas changed the world. It took courage to fight for human rights and education for all. But following her early death in childbirth, her legacy was buried, in a sustained misogynistic attack. Today we are finally putting this injustice to rights. Mary Wollstonecraft was a rebel and a pioneer, and she deserves a pioneering work of art. This work is an attempt to celebrate her contribution to society with something that goes beyond the Victorian traditions of putting people on pedestals.”
We then went to Walthamstow, to visit the William Morris Gallery.
William Morris probably needs no introduction. He was a Victorian radical whose designs have been a major influence through the decades. But he was much more than a brilliant designer and craftsman; he was also a writer, retailer, and socialist activist. Read more about his life and work at the gallery or V&A websites 6,7 or by consulting one of my favourite books 8
William was born Walthamstow, then in the county of Essex, at Elm House, on 24 March 1834. He enjoyed a privileged lifestyle, his father being a financier in the City of London. His mother was Emma Morris (née Shelton), who was descended from a wealthy bourgeois family from Worcester. William was the third of his parents’ surviving children.
The building which is now the gallery was William’s third childhood home. He was born at Elm House. This was situated opposite the fire station on Forest Road. Sadly it was demolished in 1898.9 When he was aged 6, he moved with his family to the Georgian Italianate mansion Woodford Hall in Woodford, Essex, which was surrounded by 50 acres of land adjacent to Epping Forest. Another tragedy: this too has been demolished (in 1900) and also has a fascinating history 10
In 1847, Morris’s father died unexpectedly. From this point, the family relied upon continued income from copper mines and sold Woodford Hall to move into the smaller Water House. This now houses the gallery.
The building is a fine example of Georgian domestic architecture dating from about 1744 (the date scratched on a brick found in the upper east wall). Records indicate that there was a house on the site – or perhaps on the moated ‘island’ to the rear of the present house – as far back as the fifteenth century. The existing house was known as Water House, the name deriving from the ornamental moat in the gardens at the back of the house. William lived here with his widowed mother and his eight brothers and sisters from the age of fourteen until he was twenty-two.
A new extension was built upon the same site in 2012 as part of the William Morris Gallery development project.
William Morris wrote some of his earliest poetry seated in the tall window on the main staircase, and his friend Edward Burne-Jones, on a visit to the Morrises in the 1850s, painted studies of the trees on the island.
When the Morris family left the house in 1856, its next occupant was the publisher Edward Lloyd (1815-1890). Lloyd made his fortune from publishing ‘Penny Dreadfuls’, cheap semi-plagiarisms of Dickens’s novels, and bloodthirsty melodramas.
Lloyd left the house in 1885, five years before his death. His son Frank eventually donated the house and grounds to Walthamstow and ‘Lloyd Park’ was opened in July 1900.
You can see details of the artefacts and exhibitions at the gallery website. On a Saturday you can combine your visit with some street food from the Lloyd Park Market or enjoy a picnic in the extensive grounds.
At the end of the day we felt very pleased with ourselves, having updated our knowledge of important figures in the history of political discourse.
References
- The Village that Changed the World. A History of Newington Green, London N16, Alex Allardyce
- wollstonecraftwalks.netlify.app/podcast
- historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/The-Oldest-Terraced-Houses-in-London
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Price
- thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/In_Search_of_Mary:_The_Mother_of_all_Journeys_by_Bee_Rowlatt
- wmgallery.org.uk/home
- vam.ac.uk/articles/introducing-william-morris
- E P Thompson. William Morris : From Romantic to Revolutionary.
- shadyoldlady.com/location.php?loc=845
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodford_Hall
DrT 