Obelisk to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) was an English writer. Born the eldest child of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull, in 1712 she eloped and married Edward Wortley Montagu. On his appointment as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1716, Lady Mary travelled with him to Turkey. She had contracted smallpox the previous year and, having previously lost family and friends to the disease, became greatly interested in the practice of inoculation, then widely undertaken in Turkey but virtually unknown in England, eventually having her five-year old son inoculated. On the Montagus’ return to England in 1719, she continued the practice of inoculating her own children, and…

An 18th century record suggests that the model for the obelisk was a Roman original, which stood in the Porta del Popolo in Rome. It is built of sandstone ashlar and tapers to a pyramidal point. This was originally enhanced by a depiction of the sun, but this was lost some time in the 20th century. The present disc is a replacement, installed in 2008. The obelisk carries two inscriptions, [see box]. The original dedicatory plaque bears a cypher, the letter S, a mark used by the second earl but not by the first. The second plaque is a modern substitute, replicating the text of the, now-illegible, first inscription.