Born in Coventry. From an acting family her stage career started at age 8. When 17 she retired from the stage to marry artist G.F. Watts, 30 years her senior. Her desire for the stage was greater than that for her husband and they separated after less than a year. She disappeared and her father misidentified a body recovered from the Thames as hers. She resurfaced to reveal that she was, aged 20, having a happy affair with the architect-designer Edward W. Godwin, which produced two children. She went on to have two more marriages, each to actors (Irving and an American 30 years her junior), but her greatest partnership was professional, with the actor/manager Henry Irving. Died at her home in Kent, Smallhythe, which is now a museum. John Gielgud was her great-nephew.
This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Ellen Terry
Commemorated ati
Queen's Theatre - Long Acre
Queen's Theatre The old Queen's Theatre occupied this site for just eleven y...
Other Subjects
Finsbury Park Empire Theatre
Designed by Frank Matcham. One of London’s most popular variety theatres. Here, in January 1921, the magician P. T. Selbit performed the illusion of "sawing a lady in half" - its first public perfo...
George F. J. MacLeod
George Francis James MacLeod. Manager of the Hackney Empire. Born in Chorlton in 1870, and married in Leeds in 1893, a commercial traveller in Potternewton, Leeds in 1901. Source: Wikimedia.
Mrs Bateman
We initially identified the Mrs Bateman on the mural as the wife of Sidney Frances Bateman, theatre manager, initially at the Lyceum Theatre with her husband but on his death she carried on alone f...
Roger Lloyd-Pack
Actor. Born in Islington. For many years he was a relatively unknown stalwart with the Royal Shakespeare and National Theatre companies. It was in 1981 that he achieved national fame, playing the l...
People's Palace
Proposed by Walter Besant, the first People's Palace was built by the Beaumont Trustees, ‘Unitarian philanthropists’, to replace Beaumont's Philosophical Institution which had been in Beaumont Squa...
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King Edward VI
Only son of Henry VIII (with Jane Seymour who died 12 days after the birth), born Hampton Court. Became king aged 9 and died of consumption 6 years later, at Greenwich Palace. While king he was sup...
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