Yorkshire women who founded one of the first schools for the blind will be remembered in a groundbreaking new project

Sarah Cobham, who pioneered The Forgotten Women of Wakefield project alongside three other women, has been on a mission to ensure that Wakefield becomes the first city in the UK to have as many blue plaques for women as they do men.

Sarah said: “When we started there were around 30 blue plaques honouring men in the city, 50 for buildings and only four for women.

“Myself and fellow historian Helga Fox made it our mission to not only unearth the stories of inspirational women who had been written out of history by men but to bring about blue plaque parity.”

When the group started, Wakefield Civic Society only had plaques commemorating: sculptor Barbara Hepworth, writer and boarding school headteacher Richmal Magnall, children’s author and teacher Constance Heward, and First World War nurse Nellie Spindler.

Since then the group has secured blue plaques for…

“It’s a lot of work researching, funding, and promoting to secure a new blue plaque, which costs around £10,000. As funding gets harder in the cost of living crisis, we are now looking at digital blue plaques which will cost around £1,000.”

Other parts of Yorkshire have also digitised some blue plaques and have digital tours to discover more about current blue plaques.

Earlier this year Rotherham District Civic Society introduced AI technology which means people can listen to an audio narration of blue plaques in the area.

In 2020 York Civic Trust introduced virtual blue plaques as part of a campaign where people could nominate ‘coronavirus heroes.’

Sarah and her team aim to achieve their goal of blue plaque parity by 2028, 100 years after the Equal Franchise Act that granted equal voting rights to men and women.