ARCHIVE.
The Edith Bradley Archive
1895-1935
[Labor]. Bradley, Edith. Manuscripts, Correspondence, and Printed Matter. 1895-1935
Edith Bradley (c.1859-1943) is a significant and neglected figure in the fight for women’s equality, remembered best as the first Warden of the Lady Warwick Hostel, Reading, and of the Lady Warwick College, Studley (1898-1905). The rest of Bradley’s interesting and committed career has to be pieced together from newspaper reports and other sources, and through the manuscript material and printed matter detailed below.
In 1892 Bradley proposed a “scheme for the ‘Employment of Women Graduates and others as Pioneer Lecturers’” at the Women Workers’ Conference at Bristol (Times, 9 November 1892; and letter by her in Times, 21 November 1892). Five years later (1897) she was sub-editor, under the Countess of Warwick, of the volume Women’s Education in the British Empire. She was also Honorary Secretary of the Educational Flower Show and Rural Education Union, on its foundation in 1901. In the years that followed she was lecturing with lantern slides.
By 1907 she had resigned her position as Warden, and in March of the following year, together with Miss Baillie Hamilton, she “acquired Greenway Court, near Maidstone, for the development of a model small holding, the intention being to demonstrate what can be done by women in the lighter branches of agriculture” (Times, 19 July 1909). The following year “the Mercia Small Holding, Greenway Court, Hollingbourne, Kent” was reported, “through the energy and skill of the owners,” to be “working its way into prominence as a centre of experimentation and proficiency in practices suitable to holdings of restricted area, these including dairying, fruit growing, fruit preserving, market gardening, pig keeping, poultry keeping, and bee keeping” (Times, 25 July 1910). Three years later the opening of a “new wing and other alterations and improvements” were celebrated at what was now called the Mercia Dairy and Poultry Farm.
During the Second World War Bradley was District Representative for the West Kent Women’s County Agricultural Committee, and Manager of the Mercia Jam Committee. These activities, too, are reflected in the collection. By 1920 Bradley was advertising “Practical TRAINING for gentlemen in Gardening, Fruit and Dairy Farming” at Greenway Court (Times, 8 October 1920). By the mid-nineteen-thirties Bradley, resident in Rusper, Horsham, was editing the journal Farming (see below).
Bradley’s death was reported in the Times of 18 December 1943 as follows: “BRADLEY. – On Dec. 3, 1943, at Littledean, Gloucestershire, EDITH BRADLEY, aged 84, first Warden of Lady Warwick College, now Studley College, Warwickshire.” A scant tribute to an accomplished woman.
The archive breaks down as follows:
‘Programme of Morning Concert (in Aid of the Women Lecturers’ Association) at Stafford House by kind permission of the Duchess of Sutherland on Thursday, April 25th, 1895, at 3 o’clock.’ 4to, 3 pp. Bifolium. Printed on pink paper. From (Bradley’s home) the ‘Office of Women Lecturers’ Association, 4, Caroline Place, Mecklenburgh Square, W.C.’
Letter to ‘Miss E Bradley | Mercia Apiary’ from M. H. Read of the Irish Bee-Keepers’ Association, Sallypark, Clondalkin, 15 May 1914, supplying her, at the request of the Rev. Mr Digges, ‘with synopsis of Exam for Experts’ Certificates’; 4to, 1 page. Accompanying the letter, in Read’s hand, are two 4to pages of questions, the first page headed ‘Preliminary Exam. for Experts’ Certificate’. All three pages on the Association’s letterheads. Also present is a manuscript, in Bradley’s hand, of notes for ‘Bee Lectures’ (8vo, 2 pp).
Three printed circulars for the West Kent Women’s County Agricultural Committee, all three printed in green, and the first two signed in type by Bradley. The first item, dated 27 December 1915 (folio, 1 p.), headed ‘War Work. Women and Agriculture’ urges the reader to look over offic
Print Inquire