Six on Saturday | Scarecrows

Jane Goodall

Marie Curie

Coco Channel

Emmeline Pankhurst

Venus Williams

Beatrix Potter

A very different Six on Saturday today.  A week or so ago I visited the Trengwainton Gardens near Penzance mainly to have a look at the wonderful Scarecrow exhibition in the Walled garden. They hold it every year and with a different theme each time and this year’s theme of Inspirational Women commemorates 100 years since some women received the right to vote.

1. Beatrix Potter.  She was born on 28 July 1866 in London and grew up to be a writer, illustrator, farmer and conservationist. She wrote over thirty books including her much loved Tale of Peter Rabbit. With the proceeds of the books and a legacy from an aunt she bought several farms in the Lake District and was a fierce campaigner in issues about conservation. When she died in 1943, aged 77, she left 4,00 acres of countryside to the National Trust as well as fourteen farms.
   
2. Jane Goodall was born on 3 April 1934 in England. She is a primatologist and anthropologist, renowned as a world expert in the study of chimpanzees, spending many years sitting amongst them and observing their behaviour. She set up the Jane Goodall Institute which empowers people in the conservation and development of their communities, along with a global education programme for young people called Roots and Shoots.
   
3. Venus Williams was born on 17 June 1980 in the USA. Together with her sister Serena they have a remarkable tally of Grand Slam titles. Between them they have inspired a new generation of power and athleticism in women’s tennis.
   
4. Emmeline Pankhurst was born 14 July 1858 in Manchester England. She founded organisations which fought to allow married women the right to vote in local elections. They became known as suffragettes and suffered arrests and hunger strikes as a result of their cause. In 1918 voting rights were granted to women over the age of 30.  Emmeline died in 1928 shortly after women were granted equal voting rights with men.
   
5. Marie Curie was a scientist who was born on 7 November 1867 in Poland. She moved to Paris to pursue her scientific studies and developed the theory of radioactivity discovering two new elements: polonium named after her homeland, and radium. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person and only woman to win it twice and in two different sciences – physics and chemistry.
   
6. Coco Channel (real name Gabrielle) was born on 19 August in Paris, France. She grew up in a convent surrounded by nuns in black and white and these colours influenced her fashion designs including the iconic ‘little black dress‘. Coco also designed handbags and perfume. She is the only fashion designer listed on TIME magazine’s list of the top 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
   I might possibly be bending the Prop’s rules a bit here, but they are all located in a lovely walled garden, the exact size of Noah’s Ark.

Source: All text is from the accompanying plaques in the garden. The characters themselves were the inspiration of artist John Keys and the local school children he worked with.

See here for the participant’s guide.

Six on Saturday