The Society has been running a blue plaque scheme since 1995. If you’d like to learn more about making a nomination, please download our advice sheet.
If you are ready to make a nomination, please download and complete our nomination form.
Once completed, the nomination form can be emailed back to us or posted to our office address (details are on the form).
PLEASE NOTE: We only cover Wakefield city and the surrounding villages – we do not cover the other towns in the District, some of which have their own societies.
Our new Blue Plaque book is now available.
In October 2023, we published a new, updated guide to the blue plaques erected by the Society since 1995. You can purchase copies of the book via our on-line shop here but we are also planning to give out free copies of the book to people who participate in our blue plaque guided walks starting in the Spring of 2024.
The book was published with funding support from Wakefield Council in the form of a Culture Grant as part of Our Year 2024 – a year-long festival of culture and creativity planned for next year across the Wakefield district.
Our new guide covers all 61 of the Society’s plaques but does not cover the other plaques in and around the city centre that have been erected by others – and there are a suprising number of these if you know where they are (hint, not all are blue!).
Space didn’t permit us to include the 17 blue plaques that we have erected in partnership with the Forgotten Women of Wakefield project. Information about these plaques (and others erected by the project) can be found on the Forgotten Women of Wakefield website here.
As a reminder, the 17 plaques that the Society was involved with are as follows (and they are grouped here under the trail headings used in the Society’s book):
| Plaque: | Location: | Trail : |
| 1. The Gissing Sisters | 9 Wentworth Terrace | Northgate |
| 2. Gertrude McCroben | Wentworth House, Wentworth Street | Northgate |
| 3. Edith Mackie | St John’s House, St John’s Square | Northgate |
| 4. Louisa Fennell | 21 St John’s Square | Northgate |
| 5. Clara Clarkson | 1 Hatfeild Street | Northgate |
| 6. Dame Marjorie Williamson | 2, Belgrave Terrace | Northgate |
| 7. Mary Frances Heaton | Clock Tower, former Stanley Royd Hospital, Tuke Grove | Northgate |
| 8. Edna Coates | Pinderfields Hospital Diabetes Centre | Northgate |
| 9. Florence Beaumont | 38 Bond Street | Wood Street |
| 10. Eva Lett | 5-7 Cliff Parade | Wood Street |
| 11. Ann Hurst (*) | 56 Westgate (Woolpacks Yard entrance) | Westgate |
| 12. Ann Clarkson | 7 Westgate End | Westgate |
| 13. Catherine Milnes Gaskell | The Lodge, Thornes Park | Westgate |
| 14. The Staines Sisters | Junction of Quebec Street and Westgate (Wickes perimeter wall) | Westgate |
| 15. Elizabeth Dawson and Sarah Parker Remond (*) | 45-47 Westgate (former Corn Exchange site) | Westgate |
| 16. Phyllis Lett | 6 South Parade | Kirkgate |
| 17. Eliza Gleadall | Priest’s House, Heath | Kirkgate |
(*) These two plaques were paid for by the Westgate Heritage Action Zone project (HAZ), a circa £4M project co-funded by Wakefield Council in partnership with Historic England. As part of the HAZ project, the Society was allocated funding to erect a number of new plaques within the HAZ area and also to refurbish others in Westgate that were in need of attention having been in place for over twenty years. The Society agreed that two of the new plaques would form part of the Forgotten Women of Wakefield project.