West of England and South Wales Women's History Network Blog

On Friday 9 June 2923 - a very hot day! – Exeter Civic Society unveiled a blue plaque at 88 Pennsylvania Road, the home for over thirty years of Mary Willcocks, author, lecturer and feminist.  At the Blue Plaque unveiling, 88 Pennsylvania Road, Exeter Mary Willcocks (1869-1952), was a novelist and suffrage activist who spent most of her life in Exeter. She was born on a farm close to Dartmoor, which provided the background for many of her novels, featuring strong women characters, often set in rural Devon. She moved to Exeter in 1907 when her early novels proved successful enough for her to risk abandoning teaching for life as a freelance writer and speaker. The publication of her seventh novel in 1913 prompted a feature in the Devonian Year Book with a portrait photograph showing her in her forties.    Mary Willcocks in the Devonian Year Book During her first ten years in Exeter she campaigned for votes for women, organising campaigns across Devon and Cornwall for the Na...

Imagined conversations between Julia Neville and some of the women who she ‘meets’ in the course of her researches. The content of the ‘conversation’ is based on items originally featured in archives and local newspapers. This month’s ‘interviewee’ is Mrs Emily Ward, 50 Preston Street, Exeter, October 1929 Good morning, madam, what can I get you? Well, fancy that – Miss Neville, isn’t it? I remember you. You were one of the teachers down at Rack Street Infants when our Maud and our James were there, weren’t you?   I remember you bringing James back home once when he’d cut his knee in the playground, and coming in to put another bandage on. He was no more than a tot then, can’t have been at school long. Yes, you’re quite right, we were living at our shop in Preston Street then, at no 19. A wardrobe dealer’s it was to start with, a lot of second-hand stuff from house clearances and what people brought in. Nowadays I do a lot more haberdashery. There’s always a place in the West Q...