Celebrating Chichester's inspirational women in new exhibition

Chichester’s Novium Museum manager Amanda Rogan is wanting people to feel inspired; she is wanting people to leave feeling that so much is possible.

Now open, the museum’s new exhibition is ChichestHER, the stories of notable women from the Chichester District both past and present.

It is the culmination of a three-year project made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund which awarded the project a grant of £117,266.

Running until April 17 2027, it celebrates the lives, work and achievements of 19 women from Tudor times to the present day, exploring the impact they have had on local life, from suffrage and education to art, medicine, sport and beyond.

Amanda said: “A lady called Francesca Tambling (from The Chichester Women’s History Group) came to us about three years ago, and she talked to us about how Chichester's public art does not have any female statues apart from the one at the Minerva Theatre, and she was talking about how few blue plaques there were to women as well. We had an informal chat about what the museum might be able to do and how we could look at working on a project together. We went away and looked at our collection, and we realised we had items that had belonged to women or were associated with women but we didn't really have any complete stories about women. The discussion progressed, and we made an application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund. About two years ago we were successful and were awarded the grant from the Lottery. It is the biggest grant that the museum has ever had. Since then we've been working on this.

“We worked with Francesca and volunteers and other interested parties to pull together a list of women that we knew about and that we might be able to include. We had more than 100 names. We decided that we were not going to be able to do all of those! We needed to think about who we were going to be able to include. We were looking at links to Chichester and their impact and we wanted a real spread of time periods and different backgrounds. And so we got together an independent panel and gave them very brief biographies of all of them. They came up with 19 names, and I agree with the selection they made. I think there are amazing stories that go right from the Tudor period to the modern day and that include everything from sport and medicine to performing arts to archaeology. There's something for everything.”

Amanda is delighted with the result: “We just want it to be really inspiring for everybody but especially young girls and young women to show them the range of backgrounds and circumstances, to show them who these women were and who they are and what their young lives were like. It's an amazing spread of women who have done wonderful things. And I think the interesting thing is that some of the women had problems or issues that they had to overcome. They didn't have picture perfect lives. Sometimes things do stand in your way but the point is they did not let them stop them. We're talking about women who had to overcome certain things in their lives to achieve the amazing things they did.”

And that’s a big part of the richness of the exhibition.

Another great thing is that the women whose names didn't go through to the exhibition itself will certainly not be forgotten: the aim is to include them all on a new website which is in development with a number of biographies already up there. It is a dedicated interactive website where the public can submit stories, photographs and research about local women – creating a digital archive accessible to all and representing the whole of the district. The idea is that this will create a permanent archive that people can access and add to.

For more information about the exhibition, the events programme that accompanies it and the whole ChichestHER project, visit the dedicated website www.chichesther.org.

Among the women in the exhibition are:

Kate Friedländer (1902-1949): A remarkable psychoanalyst who fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and later worked in Chichester. One of very few women in her field during the Second World War, Friedländer established and led the West Sussex County Council Child Guidance Service from 1945.

Anita White (1945-present): A lifelong advocate for women in sport, White has made a huge contribution to sport as an athlete, educator, scholar and advocate for gender equality.

Katherine Murray (1909-1998): During her 23-year tenure as principal of Bishop Otter College, a women's teacher-training institution at the time, Murray oversaw its development into a co-educational institution, tripling student numbers and expanding its facilities and cultural assets.

Ethel 'Madge' Turner (1884-1948): Born and raised in Chichester, Turner later became a leading member of the Women's Freedom League in the city. She organised events, delivered public speeches and campaigned tirelessly for votes for women.

Vera Buxton-Knight (1893-1969): Buxton-Knight was a central figure in Selsey's wartime efforts during the Second World War, providing outstanding leadership, compassion and community support. She coordinated the arrival and care of more than 800 evacuees, served as a transport officer for the Women's Voluntary Service and Air Raid Precautions and worked as a senior ambulance officer and first responder.

The stories of more familiar names are also shared, including the late Chichester-based actress, Dame Patricia Routledge; best-selling author, Kate Mosse CBE and Chichester-area singer and performer Dawn Gracie.

More than 40 volunteers have been involved with the exhibition, working with the museum team to identify women for inclusion, carrying out research and digitising items for the museum collection.