Dame Judi Dench celebrates another eminent woman

Dame Judi Dench has unveiled an English Heritage Blue Plaque in honour of Ada Salter, first woman mayor of a London borough who lived from 1866 to 1942. Salter was a pioneering politician who transformed the lives of thousands of people in Rotherhithe, working among the poor in the dockside district of Bermondsey.

Salter was elected Mayor of Bermondsey in 1922 and helped introduce a public health service in the area, cleared slums, built playgrounds and planted thousands of trees.

Dame Judi, a patron of the Salter Centenary which marked 100 years since Ada was made mayor, said: “As a champion of environmentalism and the welfare of others, Ada was a force to be reckoned with. We have so much to thank her for and so much that we can still learn from her. I’m delighted to help bring this heroic woman into the public eye.”

English Heritage’s Rebecca Preston said: “Ada Salter’s accomplishments were many, and each one highly significant: from her early proposal for a green belt around London, which with her help went on to become law in 1938 whilst she was vice-chair of the London County Council Parks Committee, to the ambitious housing programme which aimed to make Bermondsey a garden city, and the maternity and child-welfare services which were the foundation of the borough’s municipal health service formed under her watch.”

The English Heritage plaque can be seen at 149 Lower Road in Rotherhithe where Salter lived in the 1890s.