Artefacts

This beautiful figurine is the sculptor Frederick Mancini’s model for the full-size statue of Florence Nightingale, Lady with the Lamp of the Crimean War, that you may see at St Thomas’s Hospital in London.

It was presented to St Margaret’s East Wellow by Margaret Parkinson in 1987. She had been given the figurine as a personal gift by Frederick Mancini, in his gratitude for her devoted nursing of his wife.

Margaret Parkinson is herself remembered in the church by a brass plaque near the Nightingale window. She spent her entire life as a member of the nursing profession, as a State Registered Nurse, State Certified Midwife, and for twenty years ran her own Nursing Home in Wimbledon.

This bronze statue of Florence Nightingale was presented to St Margaret’s Church in May 2005 by Sir David Price, former Member of Parliament for Eastleigh (when that constituency include Romsey).

The statue had come to Sir David from his aunt, Lady Daphne Heald, CBE. A tireless organiser and fund-raiser, she even turned the last birthday party she celebrated (her 99th) into a fund-raising event for the nearby church of St Martha-on-the-hill.

The statue was presented to her by grateful fellow members of the Royal College of Nursing for having been Chairman of the Appeals Committee, and Vice-President from 1950-1978.

Among the other items of Nightingale memorabilia must be numbered the Nightingale Prize Commemorative Medal, which is on permanent loan to the Church from the Nightingale Society of California.

On the obverse it bears a high relief portrait of Miss Nightingale after the bronze bust sculpted by Sir John Steele (1804-1891).

On the reverse is a sculptured coxcomb above the citation “To Miss Florence Nightingale as a mark of esteem for her devotion towards the Science of Nursing.”

Our most recent gift has been that of two Victorian bonnets attributed to Miss Nightingale. Mrs Napier, a great admirer of Miss Nightingale, worked for her and encouraged her children to bring up their own daughters in the nursing profession. Mrs. Napier was given the bonnets by friends of Miss Nightingale who lived in Woodgreen. They passed down through the family until one of her Granddaughters, Miss Alice Brown, bequeathed them on her death to Mrs Ina Williamson of New Milton, who donated them to us.


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