Essex Women’s Commemoration Project

To ensure sustainability, the idea is for the lead to be taken locally.

EWCP collaborates with history societies, heritage organisations and communities to instigate blue plaques.

Project partners have included Essex Gardens Trust, the Women’s Institute, Community Rail Partnership, and groups in various places, including Basildon, Canvey, and Newport.

EWCP has been grateful for a grant from Essex Heritage Trust, but most plaques and associated costs have been funded by local donors.

Plaques of appropriately high quality are manufactured by several companies. The project has been able to negotiate favourable terms, with each plaque costing around £400, but costs are likely to rise.

The process is not bureaucratic, and planning permission is not required unless a Listed building is involved.

The EWCP is aware of further installations being planned or hoped for. If you have a suggestion for a blue plaque to recognise the achievements of a woman in Essex, please approach your local history society.

Advice is available from the project team – email: ewcp2022@gmail.com

Further information is available on the EWCP Wikipedia entry.

Starting with Margaret Cavendish in September 2021, near St John’s Abbey Gatehouse in Colchester, blue plaques have since been unveiled in more than thirty locations across Essex.

The great majority have involved EWCP, but others are the result of welcome local initiatives.

Dr Edith Pechey-Phipson (Mary Edith Pechey) was one of an initial cohort of seven women at Edinburgh University who studied to become doctors. Such was the opposition that a live sheep was let into the exam room to distract them.

Dr Pechey later became the Chief Medical officer at the new Cama Hospital in what was then Bombay (Mumbai); the first hospital in the world to be entirely staffed by women for women.

A blue plaque was unveiled on 7th October 2022 at Langham Community Centre.

In March 2023 a blue plaque was erected on the wall of the church in Little Parndon to an enslaved woman, Hester Woodley, who is buried in the churchyard.

On 9th August 2023, the Chief Executive of the Royal Air Force Museum, Professor Maggie Appleton, MBE, unveiled in Wickford a plaque to honour Marion Wilberforce, a pioneer woman pilot, a member of the Air Transport Auxiliary.

Imagine being widowed in England more than four centuries ago.

You are in your mid-seventies, living in the West Country, and in mourning for your husband of more than fifty years. You had no children, but you had led a full life together, owning manors and lands across three counties.

Even cushioned by wealth, you are stricken by grief. Well known for generous hospitality, your household in Merrifield, Somerset, has been described as “an inn at all times, a court at Christmas”. Still in shock from your bereavement, you realise that you have no time to reflect. On his deathbed in October 1609 the man you have loved for so long has instructed you to deliver his long-held ambition to found a college at Oxford.

It is hard to comprehend what that must have felt like to Dorothy Wadham (née Petre) as she grieved for Nicholas. At an age when her pace could reasonably have slowed, and in a period of history when women in leadership were uncommon, she was empowered. She declared a robust commitment to honour her husband, noting: “it would greatly offend my conscience to violate any jot of my husband’s will”.

Perhaps the demands of the legacy were cathartic for her, but the complexity of the challenge was immense. Never venturing far from home, Dorothy Wadham tackled the issues with a single-minded resourcefulness that draws admiration to this day. In addition to the funds left by her late husband she added substantial sums from her own paternal inheritance.

She had to navigate unfamiliar administrative and legal processes and fend off sometimes ill-intentioned offers of assistance. Men of influence made bids to take over, but she steadfastly declined, saying that she would retain the responsibility “which my dear husband so solely and absolutely trusted me with”. She set to at an astonishing pace.

Within a few months, a master mason had been appointed to design and build the college. A trust deed was signed and, just over a year after Nicholas died, Wadham College received royal letters patent. It is clear from correspondence, that Dorothy was personally involved in the appointment of the Warden, Fellows, Scholars and even the college cook. She approved the statutes, and the college was formally instituted in April 1613. Dorothy was by then nearly eighty, and she died in Devon a few years later having never visited the college.

Born into wealth, the daughter of Sir William Petre, a nobleman under four Tudor monarchs, Dorothy was only six when her mother died. She was brought up by Sir William’s second wife and it is likely that she was educated at their home, Ingatestone Hall, Essex. In later life it was evident from her character, writing skills and knowledge of Latin that she had been honed by personal experiences and she had made the most of her early opportunities.

Dorothy’s substantial and remarkable achievement – and the debt owed to her husband – are today proudly recognised in the University of Oxford. She was the first woman who was not a member of the royal family or titled aristocracy to found a college at Oxford or Cambridge. That she accomplished so much, against many odds, and that she did so in her late seventies remains a source of wonder and celebration.

The professional capacities and passionate resolve that she showed, the political acumen and management skills she brought to bear, and her unwavering focus on the goal are enduring principles of leadership. Dorothy Wadham is a figure of history, a daughter of Essex and a sprightly example of how to get things done. Her story is evocative, fresh and relevant; she remains an inspiration to us all.

Supported by the Essex Women’s Commemoration Project and Wadham College Oxford, and with the agreement of Lord Petre and his family, Ingatestone and Fryerning Parish Council and residents are planning to install a blue plaque to commemorate Dorothy Wadham (1534/5 – 1618) in a public place in Ingatestone.

UPDATE:

The blue plaque was unveiled by HM Lord Lieutenant of Essex on 16th April 2025. It can be found on the London-bound platform at Ingatestone Train Station.