Dorset Hall

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 05/06/2018

TQ 2469 TQ 2569 10/70 11/70

LONDON BOROUGH OF MERTON KINGSTON ROAD, SW19 (south side) No 152, Dorset Hall

(Formerly listed as Dorset Hall, KINGSTON ROAD)

7.5.54

II Substantial detached house. Late C18 or earlier.

Plum brick red window heads, roof not visible. Three storeys. Four windows wide. Central square headed reeded early C19 entrance with attached Doric porch, corniced. C19 door. Square headed flush framed sashed windows, glazing bars, grouped in pairs with central blind bay above doorway. Parapet. Later extensions to left and right. Interior not inspected.

Historical note: Dorset Hall was the home of Rose Larmatine Yates (1875-1954), a suffragette and social reformer, and her husband Thomas, a solicitor. Yates was active in a number of causes; she was the first woman to be president of the Cyclist’s Touring Club in 1907, and served as an independent member of London County Council from 1919 to 1922, but she is best known as a suffragette. She joined the Wimbledon branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant suffrage organisation founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903, and was arrested on a deputation to the House of Commons in 1909. As secretary of the Wimbledon branch she addressed meetings across London including a large WSPU rally in Hyde Park in June 1910. During the First World War, Rose was part of a group of women who publicly challenged Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst’s attitude to the war and helped set up the ‘Suffragettes of the WSPU’ to keep the suffrage campaign in the public eye.

Dorset Hall was a favourite resting place for Yates’ close suffragette friends. Mary Gawthorpe, the WSPU’s main organiser in the North West, stayed there for prolonged periods in 1910 and 1911 when recovering from appendicitis and a subsequent later health breakdown. Another important friendship was with Emily Wilding Davison, the suffragette who was killed by the King’s horse during a protest at the Derby in 1913. Thomas Larmatine Yates supported his wife’s activities and sometimes acted for the suffragettes. He represented the Davison family at the inquest into her death. Emily’s papers passed to Rose and formed the basis of the Suffragette Reading Room, the archive that later became the Suffragette Fellowship Collection.

This list entry was amended in 2018 as part of the centenary commemorations of the 1918 Representation of the People Act.

Listing NGR: TQ2501169841