Recorded Talks about Victorian Women
Ten Birmingham Women: A Talk by Henrietta Lockhart
Winterbourne House and Garden were designed in 1903 as a family home for John and Margaret Nettlefold. This talk revolves around Margaret Nettlefold, a well-educated and confident Victorian woman, born into a prominent Birmingham industrial dynasty and destined to marry into another.
Henrietta Lockhart is Collections Officer at Winterbourne House and Garden.
The Remarkable Pinwill Sisters. A Talk by Helen Wilson
In this talk, learn all about the remarkable Pinwill sisters who worked as professional woodcarvers in Victorian Ermington and then Plymouth. The successful Pinwill sisters, Mary, Ethel and Violet, learnt their craft and defied convention to become professional ecclesiastical woodcarvers in 1890.
Helen Wilson discovered the Pinwill sisters in 2009, while visiting Morwenstow church, Cornwall, an experience that sparked a desire to uncover more about them.
Women on the Move: Working Class Railway Excursions in the Early Victorian Period
by Susan Major
The leisure opportunities for working class women in early Victorian Britain have received little attention. The fast developing railway network provided a ‘connectedness’ across the landscape, enhancing the potential mobility of the working classes. Early railway excursions gave women the opportunity to travel far away from home in crowded railway
wagons, a cheap freedom, which they enjoyed, despite risking offensive behaviour by men. This talk uses evidence from contemporary newspapers and 19th century literature, to offer glimpses of the leisure activities of ordinary women from the 1830s to the 1860s.
Susan Major completed a PhD with the Institute of Railway Studies & Transport History at the University of York in 2012.
The Monk Sisters at St James the Less:
Women and Architectural Patronage in
Victorian Britain
by Alex Bremner
In this talk Professor Alex Bremner will explore the role of Jane Emily and Penelope Anna Monk in the commissioning of St James the Less, Pimlico, and what, if any, impact their vision for the church had on G E Street’s design. Extant sources will be examined for what they reveal about the day-today oversight of the project, the working relationship between architect and
patron, and the keen interest shown in the church by Emily Jane Monk, especially. The role of the sisters will be considered in the context of the wider phenomenon of female architectural patronage during the period, along with the status and sexual identity of middleclass women. Alex Bremner is Professor of Architectural History at the University of Edinburgh and the award-winning author of Imperial Gothic: Religious Architecture
and High Anglican Culture in the British
Empire, c.1840-17870.