28/07/2026
📆DATE FOR YOUR DIARY: TUESDAY 1ST SEPTEMBER 2026 📆
UNSUNG WOMEN IN SOMERSET - AN ILLUSTRATED PRESENTATION BY HELEN PUGH- 7:30PM CHILCOMPTON VILLAGE HALL. £5 entry. Raffle available raising funds for Radstock Museum charity no 1151573. We look forward to seeing you.
Radstock Museum's Bygone Days Team have invited Helen Pugh to come and talk about her book entitled Unsung Women in Somerset. Unsung Women in Somerset is a book of real-life and legendary women who lived, loved, worked and made a difference in the county of Somerset, England. Often, these women were erased from the narrative, both when they were alive and after they died in terms of how their stories were overlooked.
Starting in pre-Roman times, we go right through to the mid-20th century. The book is made up of 23 chapters that generally consist of a short story followed by historical notes, a chapter bibliography and shorter sections on other women of note from the same era.
As well as gender discrimination, some of the women encountered discrimination due to ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, social standing and so on.
Examples of the women in the book include an African princess who survived and thrived despite the odds, a woman who had two funerals and an enslaved Roman woman who married a priest.
Helen explains that, “The title, Unsung Women in Somerset, refers to how many of these women have been marginalised in the past. They have not often been celebrated, mainly because most people nowadays have not heard of most of them. And I chose “in Somerset” rather than “of Somerset” because not all the women were born or raised in Somerset. Some of them came into the county later in life and so I felt the word “in” conveyed this idea better.
