Heritage Lottery Funding will enable Trestle Theatre Company to celebrate hidden heroines in Herts.

The St Albans-based theatre company has been awarded £44,500.00 by the Heritage Lottery Fund for the new project, Hertfordshire’s Hidden Heroines, aimed at discovering and celebrating some of the county’s pioneering, inspiring and heroic women.

These include the Witch of Walkern, Jane Wenham, Boudicca and her daughters who sacked St Albans as revenge on the Romans, the pioneering

entomologist Eleanor Ormerod who experimented on herself, Verulamium archaeologist Tessa Wheeler, leading Suffragette Constance Lytton, daring

World War 2 pilot Lettice Curtis and spy Elizabeth Poston among many others.

Contemporary local women will be asked for their stories of ordinary heroism and inspiration which will be recorded and brought to life, as well as stored digitally.

The project will involve schools and community organisations throughout the county, working towards an exhibition in the Museum of Hertford, a book, film and community show.

Trestle will be creating specific masks to unite the various strands of the project, which will be decorated by school children and

participants.

Emily Gray, artistic director of Trestle, said, “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to discover and celebrate the achievements of these women from our county and to find out who their modern-day equivalents are.”

The project is looking for stories of women past and present who are local heroines and for volunteers to train as oral history takers. They should contact heroines@trestle.org.uk