All about the Dorchester Sylvia Townsend Warner Statue
Honoured in Dorchester
Following a public vote, the remarkable writer and poet Sylvia Townsend Warner has been honoured with a statue, enriching Dorchester’s literary and visual heritage. She is the town’s first non-royal statue of a woman, joining the six statues of men that Dorchester already proudly displays.
Sylvia Townsend Warner was one of Britain’s most fearless and original writers, a master of wit, imagination, and quiet revolution. Her novels, poetry, and stories reshaped ideas of freedom, love, and identity with clarity and conviction. Intelligent, sharp, and quietly radical, she wrote with the confidence of someone who saw the world differently and had the courage to write it that way.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Townsend Warner lived in Dorset from 1930 until she died in 1978. These years profoundly shaped her writing and life. The books in the sculpture reflect her remarkable literary legacy; the violet, a quiet emblem of women who loved women; the cat, a tribute to her lifelong affection for them and their shared spirit of independence; and the music sheet, celebrating her achievements as a musicologist.
While Dorset has long celebrated the literary men of the county, Warner’s presence in Dorchester and her extraordinary body of work have too often gone unacknowledged. Her fiction and poetry stand proudly among the finest of her generation, modernist, visionary, and deeply humane. This statue restores her rightful place in that literary landscape, honouring a writer who lived and created with honesty and compassion.
A Life of Courage and Love Sylvia Townsend Warner lived openly with her partner, the poet Valentine Ackland, for over forty years. At a time when same-sex relationships were rarely accepted, their partnership was one of quiet strength and shared creativity.
Bringing the statue to Dorchester
The idea for a new statue in Dorchester started with Mark Chutter, Chairman and Academic Director of the Thomas Hardy Society and trustee at Visible Women UK. He said: “I raised the lack of visibility of women within the statues in Dorchester with the Dorchester Heritage Committee and enlisted the expertise of Anya Pearson from Visible Women UK who had previous success with the Mary Anning statue (in Lyme Regis) in 2022.”
Visible Women UK is a charity dedicated to restoring historical balance by commemorating women too often written out of public memory. Through statues, and community-led heritage projects, they honour the achievements of women who shaped our past, and deserve recognition in our shared landscapes today. They believe representation isn’t decorative, it’s foundational. Public spaces should reflect the diversity and brilliance of those who built our culture, fought for justice, and pushed the boundaries of science, art, and thought.
The charity held a public vote about which notable woman should be immortalised then crowdfunded for the statue and were responsible for the statue coming to Dorchester.
The Sculptor
The talented sculptor of the life-size bronze is Denise Dutton who studied figurative sculpture at the Sir Henry Doulton School of sculpture in Fenton, Stoke on Trent. In 2022, she created the beautiful Mary Anning statue in Lyme Regis. Sylvia was an avid cat lover, and over the years, she was often photographed with her cherished feline companions. The creators felt it fitting to include a cat in her sculpture, and who better to serve as the model than Dorchester’s famous Susie the Cat?
