Mary Seacole

The idea for a statue to commemorate Seacole was raised in 2004, when she topped an online poll to identify 100 Great Black Britons. Her victory led the then President of the Royal College of Nursing, Sylvia Denton, to call for the erection of a commemorative statue. The idea was supported by the London M.P. Clive Soley, who had become interested in Seacole when a group of black women from his constituency, who had served in the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, approached him for help in identifying and refurbishing Seacole's grave in St Mary's Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green in West London. Soley subsequently became chair of the Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal which undertook a…

The statue stands in the gardens of St Thomas' Hospital, facing the Palace of Westminster. The figure of Seacole is cast in bronze and the sculptor Martin Jennings depicted Seacole in motion to represent her "marching defiantly forward into an oncoming wind, as if confronting head-on some of the personal resistance she had constantly to battle". The sculpture stands on a plinth of Cumbrian slate with Portland stone dressings. Seacole stands in front of a disc, again cast in bronze although with a lighter patina to accentuate contrasts and shadows, which shows the land surface where Seacole established her "British Hotel" in the Crimea. Jennings intended the disc to have both literal…