WIREDGOV

English Heritage and partners from London Metropolitan University Special Collections, The Women's Library and TUC Library Collection invite you to catch a glimpse of the fascinating history of women's changing roles from Victorian times to the mid-20th century, shown through images of the buildings where they lived and worked in a new online resource.

Visible in Stone: a history of women through buildings, 1850-1950 is launched this week at www.english-heritage.org.uk/visibleinstone.  The online treasury of historic photographs, posters and advertisements has been compiled from English Heritage's National Monuments Record and the Special Collections at London Metropolitan University.  They have been made available to the public on-line for the first time as a result of new research. 

Visible in Stone provides a detailed insight into the changing social climate in which women in England lived their lives over the period and documents the pioneering changes they made to achieve a new freedom of access to public spaces, education, paid work and decent housing. These changes are recorded in the historic buildings around us.  Visitors to the site are invited to discover the first department stores - including the amazing shoe department at Harrods in 1919 and the first tea rooms. These places played an important part in women's journey towards emancipation in the early 1900s, providing a legitimate public space for women to visit alone. 

As women emerged from the home and into public life, they needed the facilities that we take for granted today, such as public restrooms. The Ladies' Lavatory Company opened its first, near Oxford Circus, in 1884, some 30 years after similar facilities for men. Women's public campaigns went far beyond the right to shop.  Photographs on the site illustrate how social housing reforms in the late 1800s / early 1900s (often driven by women), transformed the lives of families across the country, along with the building of new schools and colleges for girls. 

English Heritage is also appealing to the great British public to upload images of the buildings that played an important part of their grandmother's lives to the website's Facebook and Flickr sites. Do you have great photographs of your grandmother making jam for the war effort in her 1940s home?  Was your great Auntie a Land Girl?  Perhaps your great grandmother worked in one of the first department stores?  If so upload the details at http://www.flickr.com/groups/visibleinstone/

Rachel Hasted, who leads the project for English Heritage, said:

"This country was home to some of the most ambitious and inspiring women of the 19th and 20th centuries, and their efforts to make life fairer for generations to come have shaped the way we live and work today.  Sometimes we forget that their achievements are all around us in the buildings and monuments we pass every day. It has been wonderful to be involved in such a fascinating project which has uncovered a wealth of wonderful stories about our historic buildings and we invite everyone with an interest in women's history to log on and explore this fabulous new resource."

Teresa Doherty, Collections Manager from the Women's Library, said:

"The Women's Library, the largest collection of women's history in the UK, has been housed in buildings from a pub to a converted wash-house! As a partner in this project we realise that buildings are places which can harbour, teach, and change the way the world is viewed by the people outside and in them. Here at the Women's Library we specialise in keeping a record of that which should not be forgotten and this website is a great way to spot more of the hidden and fascinating stories behind women and buildings in your area, or in fact all over the UK."

For further information or to request an interview with a member of the project team please contact Rachel Tooby on 0207 973 3252 / rachel.tooby@english-heritage.org.uk.