A SERIES of events featuring Celebrated Women of Frome will take place during the Frome Festival and is being run in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name at the Frome Museum.
This includes Frome Society for Local Study’s annual event, which this year sees a talk on poet Elizabeth Singer Rowe at Rook Lane Chapel, where she worshipped and is buried.
Much admired in her lifetime, this poet of Frome’s reputation has fallen into neglect in recent centuries, but this event is seen as part of a re-evaluation of her enduring influence.
The speaker is Dr Carole Sargent, who is coming over from America to give the talk, and will reveal, among other facts, that Rowe’s poetry is quoted on gravestones all over the United States.
She said, “Elizabeth Singer Rowe was the most popular English poet of the late 17th and early 18th centuries [and her books] were bestsellers for more than a century after she died!”
A recently restored portrait will also be at the event, on Wednesday 6th July, where hopefully the circumstances behind its mysterious disappearance for several years will finally be explained.
Several walks around the town, taking in places associated with various of the celebrated women, have also been planned throughout the festival and will be led by Frome Town Council guides.
While on the second weekend, ‘The Auditions’, sees acclaimed Nevertheless Productions give their own unique take through specially created duologues performed at the museum.
The final event, ‘Let’s Talk About Alice’, will be part of Photo Frome, which runs alongside the Frome Festival, and takes place at the Assembly Rooms on Monday 11th July.
The ‘Alice’ in question being Alice Seeley, later Lady Harris, a missionary whose images of atrocities in the early 20th century Belgian Congo shocked the world.
Although seen as the first humanitarian photographer, her legacy is not without controversy, and this is explored in this collaboration between Frome Museum and Photo Frome.
The ‘Celebrated Women of Frome’ exhibition runs throughout the Frome Festival and can be viewed daily between 10am and 2pm. Although free, donations are welcomed.
The Frome Heritage Museum is at 1 North Parade, Frome, BA11 1AT. Tel. 01373 454611.
For more information about the exhibition and related programme of events, see Frome Festival brochure or website https://fromefestival.co.uk/ and https://photofrome.org/
Picture: Elizabeth Rowe, whose poetry is quoted on gravestones all over the United States.