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Frances Dove

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Frances Dove, from a 1909 publication
Frances Dove Window in All Saints' High Wycombe. She presented the window to the parish church to pay tribute to the achievement of women through the ages.

Dame Jane Frances Dove, DBE, JP (27 June 1847 – 21 June 1942) was an English women's campaigner, who founded the girls' schools, Wycombe Abbey and Godstowe.

Early life and education[edit]

Born in Bordeaux, France, the eldest of ten children of Revd. John Thomas Dove, vicar of Cowbit, Lincolnshire,[1] Dove attended Girton College, Cambridge. The University of Cambridge did not then award women degrees; she received her MA degree ad eundem from Trinity College Dublin in 1905 as one of the 'steamboat ladies'.[2]

Career[edit]

She later became assistant mistress at Cheltenham Ladies' College in 1877. From there she went on to become headmistress of St Leonards School at St Andrews, Scotland, in 1882. She founded Wycombe Abbey in 1896, and was its first headmistress. In 1900 she also founded Godstowe Preparatory School. On retirement from Wycombe Abbey in 1910, she endowed a scholarship at the school.[citation needed]

She was elected in 1907 to High Wycombe Borough Council.[3] In the 1928 New Year Honours, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.[4] She died in 1942, six days before her 95th birthday.[citation needed]

Legacy[edit]

She presented the Frances Dove Window at All Saints' Church, High Wycombe, to pay tribute to the achievement of women through the ages.[5] The window was dedicated on Ascension Day in 1933. The stained-glass was designed by Caroline Townshend, a former pupil at Wycombe Abbey.

It depicts famous women:

References[edit]

  1. ^ Dove, Dame (Jane) Frances (1847–1942), founder of Wycombe Abbey School | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 2018-02-14.
  2. ^ "Trinity Hall's Steamboat Ladies". Trinity News. 14 March 2012. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  3. ^ "Miss Frances Dove". Women's Local Government Society. Archived from the original on 2 October 2011. Retrieved 21 June 2010.
  4. ^ "No. 33343". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 1927. p. 6.
  5. ^ "All Saints High Wycombe: Heritage". Retrieved 22 January 2021.
  6. ^ "Women Stained Glass Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement Catalogue." London Borough of Waltham Forest Libraries & Arts Department, 1985. William Morris Gallery Exhibition and Brangwyn Gift in 1985. ISBN 0901974226.
  7. ^ Windows in All Saints, High Wycombe, Bucks. Buckinghamshire Stained Glass. Retrieved 19 August 2012.

Sources[edit]

  • Alison L. Prentice & Marjorie R. Theobald, Women Who Taught: Perspectives on the History of Women and Teaching (1991)
  • Elsie Bowerman, Stands there a School - Memories of Dame Frances Dove, D.B.E., Founder of Wycombe Abbey School (1965)
  • Jessie Street (ed. Lenore Coltheart), Jessie Street, a revised autobiography, Federation Press, (2004) (ISBN 1-86287-502-2)

External links[edit]