TWO new commemorative blue plaques have been placed on the sides of buildings in Oxford in honour of campaigning women.

Oxfordshire's Blue Plaques Board usually holds ceremonies when it erects new memorials in the city, but its two latest plaques were placed without fanfare because of the pandemic at Oxford Sixth Form College on King Edwards Street, off the High, and the Army Recruiting Office on St Giles.

At 35 St Giles, the new plaque remembers Annie Rogers, who lived at the address between 1891 and 1899.

In 1875, she gained first class honours and became Oxford’s first woman don, and went on to become the secretary of Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women, which was influential in a campaign for women to earn full degrees at Oxford.

The first women students to be awarded full degrees from Oxford did so in October 1920.

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The plaque at King Edward Street is in honour of Ivy Williams, the first woman called to the English Bar, who lived at the address between 1887 and 1904.

She was among the first cohort of women to be awarded full degrees from Oxford in 1920.

She qualified as a barrister in 1922, after campaigning for women to be allowed to do so, but she mainly spent her career in academia: as the first woman to teach law at Oxford University.

There are dedicated webpages telling the story of both women's lives at the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board website: oxonblueplaques.org.uk