Find me at: Holy Trinity Church

W3W: ///guards.belt.exile

Researched by: York University and Churches Conservation Trust

Designed by: Shannon Reed

Anne Lister’s (1791-1840) life and diaries have blazed a trail for the LGBTQIA+ community today, helping people understand their history and embrace their identity. A businesswoman, traveller, intellectual, scientific investigator, lesbian, and diarist. Lister’s expansive diaries encompass all aspects of her daily experiences and remarkable life. Her use of a coded ‘crypthand’ allowed her a private literary space through which to negotiate the social, emotional, and sexual challenges of her lesbian identity. Strongly independent and willing to forge her own path, Lister was able to live confidently and authentically in early nineteenth century Yorkshire as a woman who ‘loved and only loved the fairer sex’. York was an important city to Lister throughout her life. It was here, at Holy Trinity Church, that she took the sacrament with Ann Walker to mark their lifelong commitment and love for each other.

❝The wonderful journals that were kept by Anne Lister throughout her lifetime are central to my design for this project. Anne Lister was an infamous diarist, writing personal diaries from the age of fifteen in both plain text and in her 'crypthand' - a combination of Greek, Latin, mathematical symbols, zodiac and punctuation that she devised. The discovery and deciphering of her diaries has enabled us to understand Anne Lister as the trailblazer we know her to be today, and provided a valuable insight into her relationship with Ann Walker who she secretly married in 1834. The design will seek to reflect the contents of her journals and the materials used in their bindings, using small illustrations similar to those seen in her diaries to represent her multi-faceted life story.

The York Trailblazers Art Trail is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate icons and local initiatives through the eyes of resident artists, contributing to York's cultural landscape. I wanted to participate in the trail to gain experience in working with members of the local community to create a piece of artwork that would be representative of their chosen icon and celebrate her. Anne Lister was a notorious defiant of the Victorian age, a lifelong diarist, and a formidable businesswoman. Celebrating the multiple facets of Anne Lister as a Yorkshire icon is integral to her dedicated sculpture in the trail, and will help to inform the trail's visitors of her impact.❞

Anne Lister (1791-1840) was a lesbian, diarist, businesswoman, traveller, intellectual, scientific investigator, and most of all, a trailblazer. Strongly independent and willing to forge her own path, Lister lived confidently and authentically in early nineteenth-century Yorkshire as a woman who ‘loved and only loved the fairer sex’. Her exceptional life is recorded and preserved through her expansive 5½ million-word diaries, today held by the West Yorkshire Archive Service in Halifax. These documents offer extraordinary insight into all aspects of Lister’s daily experience. Her use of a ciphered ‘crypthand’ created a private literary space through which Lister negotiated the social, emotional, and sexual challenges of her lesbian identity. Anne Lister’s life and diaries have blazed a trail for the LGBTQIA+ community today, helping people understand their history and embrace their identity. York is closely linked to Lister’s queer identity. She fell in love with Eliza Raine while at school at King’s Manor and met other lovers in York’s polite society. It was also in York, at Holy Trinity Goodramgate, that Lister and Ann Walker took the sacrament together. This marked their commitment to and love for each other and was a momentous event in the relationship which lasted the rest of Lister’s life.

The Sculpture: The trail Lister blazed is preserved through the pages of her journal and the words which fill them. This sculpture foregrounds the role of Lister’s journal in recording her life and articulating her queer identity. Its design echoes the physical composition of Lister’s journal and is decorated with Lister’s own words written in both her abbreviated English and crypthand cipher. These quotes relate to Lister’s diary writing, travel, and scientific study, but most of all to Lister’s search for a female lover and life partner. Situated at Holy Trinity Goodramgate, this sculpture celebrates Anne Lister and Ann Walker’s relationship. It includes Lister’s record of the event and her ‘prayer that our union might be happy’. The decoration also includes ink sketches featured in Lister’s journal and a series of other sketches indicative of Lister’s life. The restrained use of primarily black and white emphasises the ink and paper through which Lister recorded and constructed her life.

Trailblazer Team: This sculpture was a collaboration between the Churches Conservation Trust and the University of York. It was developed by a group of students with an academic interest in Anne Lister and Holy Trinity volunteers. Many members of the group identify as LGBTQIA+ and are personally invested in Lister’s legacy to the LGBTQIA+ community. The artwork was created by Shannon Reed, a third-year biology student at the University of York. Shannon is a multimedia artist who produces work using oil, pointillism, and specialises in calligraphy. This project was generously supported by the University of York’s Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Institute for Public Understanding of the Past. Thanks also go to the West Yorkshire Archive Service for their permission to reproduce text from Lister’s journals.