Lightcliffe Tower Anne Walker memorial

Yorkshire Post

Friday 22 September 2023 marks 183 years since the death of Anne Lister, and organisations around Calderdale are taking part in a programme of events to celebrate her remarkable life and legacy. On Sunday 24 September from 10.30am-12.30pm, there is the rare opportunity to visit Lightcliffe Tower and the memorials it contains, including Ann Walker’s restored plaque  Celebrating the remarkable life and legacy of Anne Lister

Transcript

00:00 I'm Rachel Lappin, I am the Anne Lister Programme Coordinator for Calderdale Council.

00:04 We're here today at Old St Matthews at Lightcliffe, which is where Anne Walker is buried.

00:10 We are here because this weekend marks the 183rd anniversary of the death of Anne Lister.

00:16 Of course, Anne Lister and Anne Walker were married.

00:20 It is possibly the first lesbian marriage ever recorded.

00:23 We've got a weekend of events to remember Anne Lister.

00:27 We've got walks, we've got talks, we've got lectures, we've got tours.

00:30 They can all be found on the Calderdale website, which is culterdale.co.uk/events.

00:36 We're here today to look at and remember Anne Walker.

00:40 I'll hand you over now to our good friend Ian Philp, who will tell you more.

00:43 I'm Ian Philp and I'm Chair of the Friends of St Matthews Churchyard.

00:49 We've been involved in this for the last 10 years,

00:53 turning it from a completely neglected and overgrown churchyard into what we've got today.

01:01 In amongst all of this, we found ourselves with Anne Walker's grave

01:06 and increasingly more and more people of interest.

01:11 We now find people coming from America, Canada, Australia, all over Europe,

01:19 as well as right the way across the United Kingdom.

01:22 Anne is buried here and her memorial is inside the tower behind me.

01:28 That is one of the things as well that people come with great interest to come along, have a look.

01:34 We're then in a position to say the history of it and the connections with Gentleman Jack,

01:41 the BBC programme, which created a lot of this interest.

01:45 Probably eight of the characters, the real characters within that story, are buried within our churchyard.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended