Despite its sleepy seaside facade, Weston has been home to many distinguished individuals.
Throughout the town, 20 blue plaques have been placed to commemorate some of the famous historical figures with links to Weston.
Weston Town Council, alongside Weston Civic Society, installed four plaques across the town last year and also built a new website which has an audio and map tour of all the locations. People can arrive at a plaque, use their phone to access the page on the website and play the film which gives you the history of the plaque.
Below are the figures commemorated on the plaques in 2020.
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Bristol Road Lower.
The first blue plaque unveiled in 2020 was for Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, a leading suffragist. The plaque was installed at 80 Lewisham House to commemorate the former home of the Pethicks, a well-heeled family who moved from Bristol in 1877 to live in the property.
The site, previously called known as Trewartha, was an imposing residence with gate-lodge and stabling set in grounds which occupied the entirety of land between Bristol Road Lower, Montpelier, Montpelier East and Trewartha Park.
Emmeline spent about 14 years living at Trewartha before moving to work at the West London Methodist Mission in 1891 where, having encountered the horrors of urban poverty and despair, she founded a dressmaking co-operative for poor young women.
Her introduction of an eight-hour working day with guaranteed minimum wages and holiday entitlement was revolutionary and led to her embracing socialism.
She campaigned for suffrage across Europe and America while Dorothy, along with Annie Kenney and Millicent Browne, organised a women's protest on Weston beach in 1908 and were accused by the Mercury of being a 'nuisance… prone to hysteria … with a perverted realisation of right and wrong'.
John Hugh Smyth-Pigott, Grove House.
August saw a former lord of the manor immortalised in plaque form. John inherited the manorial lordship of Weston on Christmas Day 1823, following the death of The Rev Wadham Pigott.
The energetic young squire encouraged village children to plant trees on the hillside, initially to create a private game reserve but, once trees began to mature, he opened the woodland to the public.
Two of his original gate lodges are still visible today, one in private occupation in Worlebury Hill Road and the other serving food in castellated splendour at the Kewstoke end of the toll road.
With assistance from far-sighted agents he, along with a new breed of local entrepreneurs, began to change Weston from a sleepy village of little consequence into a town of rising middle-class expectation.
Dwight Eisenhower, Weston Woods.
Later in August a blue plaque was unveiled in Weston Woods to mark the night a former American president slept in a caravan in the town.
General Dwight Eisenhower stayed one night near the water tower in Weston Woods in 1944 on the way to the D-Day landings as part of his role as Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Eisenhower is the only American president to have set foot in Weston.
The town was filled with American servicemen in 1944. Officers were billeted in hotels while other ranks slept under canvass in Ellenborough Park.
Far from throwing around his status, Eisenhower opted to sleep in a caravan parked near the water tower in the woods, in the midst of military vehicles huddled under tree cover and along the Toll Road.
Following the war, Eisenhower became NATO’s first Supreme Commander and then President of the United States from 1953-1961.
Bob Hope, Southend Road.
A famous entertainer had a blue plaque installed in his honour in September.
Though born in London, Leslie Townes Bob Hope hales from a West Country stonemasonry family. His grandfather helped build Weston’s seafront wall in 1883 and then crossed the Atlantic to join stone carvers on the Statue of Liberty in America, little realising his own offspring would become one of the country’s best-loved entertainers.
The Hope family lived for a short time in Orchard Street and at 14 Lindley Terrace before moving to Bristol. Many street names and house numbers have changed over the years and the use of terrace names has all but disappeared, the current address is 20 Southend Road.
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