Mary Anning statue in Lyme Regis
It was unveiled by Professor Alice Roberts on 21 May 2022, overlooking Black Ven cliffs and Golden Cap, on the 223rd anniversary of Anning’s birth.
It was a historic day both for Lyme Regis and women in science. There are more statues of goats than there are statues of named women in the UK!
Speakers included Tracy Chevalier, Hugh Torrens, Anjana Khatwa, Dean Lomax and Tori Herridge.
The 19th-century fossil hunter and palaeontologist contributed greatly to science and found one of the first ever ichthyosaur skeletons. She also found the first complete skeleton of a plesiosaur in her Jurassic coast hunting grounds.
Evie was 10 at the time she started her campaign for a statue. She thought it was wrong that Lyme didn’t have a statue to commemorate such an important person.
Evie’s mother Anya Pearson founded the charity Mary Anning Rocks to raise £100,000+ needed to see her daughter’s dream come true and over four years the funds were found.
They’ve raised over £150,000 towards the statue and The Mary Anning Rocks Learning Legacy – a sustainable free educational program that will live on after the statue has been raised so Mary‘s voice is never lost from our history books ever again.
Evie said: “It means a lot to me to get a statue for Mary because she really needs to be remembered. The statue will be a proper reminder to just how amazing she was.”
Sculptor Denise Dutton had the honour of creating the one-and-a-quarter life-size bronze statue of Anning and her dog Tray. It contains incredible detail and has 27 ammonites dotted throughout it as well as belemnites and ichthyosaur bones.
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