Folk Rite & Fertility · Kilpeck, Herefordshire
Kilpeck Church sheela-na-gig
England's most famous sheela-na-gig — a grinning female figure frankly displaying her vulva — carved on the corbel of a perfect Norman church. Warning against lust, fertility charm, or apotropaic guardian? Scholars still argue; the carving outlasts every theory.
Sources
Nearby on the map
Cardiff's legendary dockland — one of Britain's first truly multicultural quarters, notorious in its coal-boom heyday for sailors' taverns, dance halls and commercial affection, and beloved by those who lived there as a warm, tight community the papers never bothered to understand. Shirley Bassey is its most famous daughter.
Documented historyHot spotQueer HeritagePlas Newydd (the Ladies of Llangollen)Llangollen, Denbighshire · WalesTwo upper-class Irish women who eloped in 1778 to set up home together, scandalising and enthralling Georgian society; their Gothic cottage drew Wordsworth, Byron, Wellington and Walter Scott, and Queen Charlotte won them a royal pension. A cornerstone of British queer heritage — Anne Lister herself visited.
Documented historyHot spotLiterary PassionAnne Hathaway's Cottage (Shakespeare's courtship)Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire · EnglandThe thatched farmhouse where the eighteen-year-old Shakespeare courted Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior — and married her three months before their daughter's arrival made the timeline eloquent. The settle by the fire is still called the courting bench.
Documented historySpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.