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Victoria Road, ALDEBURGH, IP15 5EA

At the junction with Church Close near St.Peter & St.Paul Church

Near St.Peter & St.Paul's Church

At the junction with the A1094 Victoria Road near St.Peter & St.Paul Church

Off Church Close

No longer an hotel. In fact, the premises have gone full circle from 19th century private home to guest house to hotel and, now, back to private accommodation. The conservatory is a 20th century addition. The house has had some illustrious residents: in the 1850s, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson - first woman doctor and first female mayor; in the 1900s, prominent suffragette Millicent Fawcett (neé Garrett); and it has also been associated with poet George Crabbe. Latterly, it was popular with visitors and musicians attending the annual Aldeburgh Festival.

Off the A1094 Victoria Road

There is a benchmark cut into the south-west buttress of the church tower.

Elizabeth Garret Anderson was the first British woman to qualify as a physician and surgeon and former Mayor of Aldeburgh, the first female mayor in Britain. She was born 9 June 1836 and died 17 December 1917, age 81. Her influence caused many changes in the medical profession. Being unsuccessful in joining the medical profession in Harley Street, she first spent six months as a surgery nurse at Middlesex Hospital, and later unsuccessfully attempted to enrol in the hospital's Medical School. The male doctors found her presence unwelcome, probably because she was better than most, eventually she was obliged to leave the Middlesex Hospital but she did so with an honours certificate in chemistry and materia medica. Elizabeth was able to obtain her credentials by way of a loophole in admissions at the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries who, according to their charter, could not legally exclude her on account of her sex. In 1865, she finally took her exam and obtained a licence from the 'Society of Apothecaries' to practise medicine. Her career is much more involved than can be written here but she is honoured by hospitals and medical centres bearing her name; the construction of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson wing of University College Hospital, she founded and became General Medical Attendant to St Mary's Dispensary in Seymour Place, later renamed the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in 1918, the year after her death. In January 2001 the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital amalgamated with the Obstetric Hospital to form the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Obstetric Hospital and The Garrett Anderson Centre at Ipswich Hospital to name a few.

The cut mark is on the SW buttress of the tower of St Peter and St Paul's church, facing SW; 77cms above ground level. For more information on this and other bench marks visit the bench mark database > http://www.bench-marks.org.uk/bm26960 To view the church > http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2079683