Herts' Hidden Heroines

Looking for female role models for their young daughters, two Herts mums began a journey that would uncover and celebrate remarkable women in the county

- Sandra Deeble

It was a conversation between two Hertfordshire mums that sparked the idea for the fascinating and inspiring project, Hertfordshire’s Hidden Heroines, that began in 2015 and continues until the end of April at Lowewood Museum in Hoddesdon.

Emily Gray, artistic director at the Trestle Theatre Company in St Albans, was talking to Anna Reynolds, a writer and freelance project manager, about women who could inspire their eight-year-old daughters. Who could they look up to, they wondered, Beyoncé? Taylor Swift?

‘I felt there was a dearth of people who could be role models,’ Emily says.

They could have left it at that. But being plucky Herts women, they decided to take action. With help from the Heritage Lottery Fund, they set about finding extraordinary women in the county. They visited schools. They invited people to nominate their favourites, expecting they might end up with a couple of dozen names. At the beginning the list was small, albeit distinguished. Boudica, Queen of the Iceni, who took revenge on the Romans by sacking Verulamium (St Albans). Elizabeth I, hardly unknown, but banished to Hatfield House between 1555-1558 where she became queen at the age of 25 and made her speech to her council who came to Hatfield to swear allegiance.

The project then just took off and continues today. Go to the Herts Memories website and you can discover inspiring women, watch films, and celebrate the fact that Hertfordshire women rock. You can even nominate your own heroine. Selections can be someone from Herts’ history, or she can be doing something heroic today.

So has Emily got a favourite? ‘Dolly Shepherd,’ she says without hesitation. Dolly was an Edwardian parachutist, born in Potters Bar in 1886.