Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Pioneering author to get blue plaque
Writer among figures to be commemorated
A world-famous Canterbury-born author is among 11 people set to be honoured with a new blue plaque in the city.
Aphra Behn, widely-known as the first professional female writer in the English language, will be commemorated with a dedicatory sign in Harbledown, where she is thought to have been born.
Canterbury Commemoration Society (CCS) and the Canterbury Society have selected Behn among 11 significant figures and events with links to the city, that are set to be memorialised with new blue plaques.
The plaque for Behn - an author, poet, playwright and spy - will be placed near where she was baptised at St Michael’s Church, Harbledown, in 1640.
It will read: “Aphra Behn, 16401689, Britain’s first professional female writer, born and baptised in this village.”
The plaque is being crowdfunded by CCS.
Chair Stewart Ross said: “Aphra was a person of the people, an ordinary Canterbury girl, and we want ordinary Canterbury people to be involved as much as possible.”
Other people and places set to be honoured in this way include Catherine Williamson,
who served as Canterbury’s first female mayor from 1939 to 1941, and Audrey Williams, an archaeologist who discovered the city’s Roman pavement in 1942.
The 11 signs will be erected in the autumn, and officially inaugurated at this year’s Canterbury Festival.
The news comes as CCS, together with campaign group A is for Aphra, forges ahead with its bid to raise £125,000 to erect a statue of Behn in the city.
Mr Ross says members of the public have been “incredibly generous” with donations.
Four sculptors hoping to design the effigy have been shortlisted.
Their maquettes - miniature draft models showing how the
piece might look - will go on public display from June 16, and will then tour around historically relevant sites between June and July.
People will then have the opportunity to vote on their preferred design.
A committee informed by this vote will take a final decision on September 1. It is expected to take about a year to build.
The location of the statue is yet to be confirmed.
If Canterbury is successful in its bid for money from the government’s Levelling Up fund, Mr Ross says it is likely “there is a prominent sight in the city centre earmarked for it” as part of the ‘Canterbury’s Tales of England’ project.