The Frances Dove Window - a feminist view

The nearest town to me is High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. It's between two and three miles away and I pop in occasionally. And, in the centre of the town - just at the end of the High Street - you'll find All Saints Church.

There's nothing particularly notable about the church itself. However, it does have a quite extraordinary stained glass window.

It's called the Frances Dove window - or The Lady Window. Frances Dove was the founder of Wycombe Abbey School, all all-girls private school in the town that boasts alumni such as Baroness Howe, Mary Pickford MP, TBaroness Butler-Sloss, Lady Nicholas Windsor, India Knight as well as actress Gabrielle Drake and comedian Sally Phillips. Titanic survivor Elsie Bowerman was the school's historian and Gustav Holst was a music teacher there.

Dove was the First woman elected to the Borough Council and should have been the first woman Mayor but the men panicked at the last minute and elected another man. Frances's response to this was to commission teh church window which celebrates women that have impacted on history. 

It was designed by Caroline Townsend - a former pupil at Wycombe Abbey School and the women depicted include Charlotte Bronte, St Bridget & St, Winifred Elizabeth Fry (prison reformer), Florence Nightingale, Maude Royden and Millucent Fawcett (suffragettes), Agnata Ramsay (first woman to achieve classics tripos at Cambridge), Mary Kingsley, Edith Cavell, St Margaret. Margaret Roper (daughter of Thomas More). Margaret Beaufort (mother of Henry Tudor), Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill, Jenny Lind, Sophia Jex Blake (pioneer for medical education for women), Grace Darling, Queen Victoria, Christina Rosetti, St Hilda & St Frideswide, Mary Slessor, Amy Johnson and more. The window depicts them with books to show that they are educated women.

It's a wonderful thing and it serves as a permanent reminder of how important women are to society.