Today is International Womens Day and Hastings has had its share of influential woman ranging from explorers and political protestors to writers and a punk rock icon.
These women made a real impact, often on an international scale, and their memories and legacies live on in buildings named after them, their music, and the books they left behind. One even features as a large painting on the outside of a popular Hastings pub.
Sheila Kaye-Smith (1887 – 1956) was a Hastings writer known best for her book The End of the House of Alard amongst other successes which enjoyed worldwide sales. Photo: supplied
6. Shirley Collins
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE (born Hastings 5 July 1935) is an English folk singer who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. She often performed and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose accompaniment on piano and portative organ. In the 1950's she travelled America with musician Alan Lomax collecting songs. A film about her life, The Ballad of Shirley Collins, was released in October 2017 and features many scenes of Hastings. Photo: supplied
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Marianne North (24 October 1830 – 30 August 1890), born in Hastings, was a prolific English Victorian biologist and botanical artist, notable for her plant and landscape paintings, her extensive foreign travels, her writings, her plant discoveries and the creation of her gallery at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. There is a painting of her above the Imperial pub in Queens Road. Photo: supplied
8. Catherine Cookson
Catherine Cookson (1906 – 1998) was a writer who lived in the town and was the patron of the Hastings Writers' Group. She is in the top 20 of the most widely read British novelists, with sales topping 100 million. Photo: supplied