If you prefer to remain on campus we’d like to invite you to join Dr Christine Lewis for a relaxed introduction to the history of Edge Hill University through the biography of Ethel Annakin Snowden, one of our early alumni.
Edge Hill University recently opened access to its archives. This new beginning was key in the discovery of notable alumni from the institution that was founded in 1885 as the first non-denominational teacher training college for women.
One such remarkable former student was Ethel Annakin/Snowden (1881-1951). Ethel was a Socialist, a campaigner for women’s suffrage, for temperance, and a lifelong believer in pacifism. The University colours today, and its graduation gowns, still proudly display the colours of the suffrage movement.
Ethel was also a member of the Fabian Society, the Independent Labour Party, and The Women’s Peace Crusade, always fighting to eradicate social injustices whenever and wherever she perceived them. Yet her influence and presence in contemporary publications has been largely overlooked. Perhaps the status and reputation of her husband, Philip Snowden (later Viscount Snowden) MP and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first Labour Government (1924), overshadowed her own importance. In an attempt to redress Ethel Snowden’s significance to women’s Socialist history, this paper seeks to explore her formative years 1881-1903, including the period 1900-02 when she trained to be a teacher at the first non-denominational teacher training college for women in England and Wales, Edge Hill College, Liverpool (established 1885). The talk sets her experiences in the context of national, cultural, and religious occurrences, and features the personalities she knew most closely during these years.
The short talk will be followed by an opportunity to visit the latest archive display of original artefacts from the institution’s past in historic Hale Hall, part of the original 1930s campus, with Dr Chris Lewis and other archive volunteers.
Find out more about the history of Edge Hill via this introduction on the institution’s website. https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/about/vision-of-learning/