Unique Lydgate unveiling ceremony will mark International Women’s Day

Flashback to 2018: It's the day sculptor Denise Dutton, MPs Jim McMahon and Debbie Abrahams, and then Mayor of Oldham, Councillor Javid Iqbal, were among the dignitaries at Oldham suffragette Annie Kenney's statue unveiling in Oldham town centre

To mark International Women’s Day on Friday week, March 8, Oldham Council’s Leader, Cllr Arooj Shah, will unveil a plaque to commemorate what could be the birthplace of the women’s Suffrage movement.

The field in Lydgate in Saddleworth was close to the original site where the fight to get women the right to vote was born - something which happened a century later.

The unveiling comes after Helen Walton carried out research into radical reform - the movement which would eventually lead to women being given the vote in England.

During her digging into history Helen, from Rochdale, referenced, ‘Passages in the Life of a Radical,’ by Middleton-born Samuel Bamford that indicates a meeting was held in the field on May 4, 1818.

At that gathering, Bamford suggested women should be given the right to vote in reformers meetings, essentially granting them equal status with their male counterparts.

The date was 85 years before Emmeline Pankhurst is credited with forming the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903.

Helen and work colleague Danny Brierley, from Grasscroft, helped to bring the details of the meeting to the attention of the council so its place in British political history could be properly recorded and commemorated.

Unveiling of a plaque will take place in an area next to 51 Stockport Rd, Lydgate, Oldham OL4 4JJ (opposite the White Hart) between 11.30am - 12.30pm on March 8.

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