Dame Judi Dench helps secure blue plaque for social reformer Ada Salter

The first female mayor of a London borough, Ada Salter, was commemorated with a blue plaque today, 100 years after her appointment as mayor of Bermondsey.

The plaque will mark 149 Lower Road in Rotherhithe, the Women’s House of the Bermondsey Settlement where Ada lived in the late 1890s. 

It was from here, in her early career, that she undertook social work across what was to become the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey – then a deprived dockside area of South London, upon which she would make such a profound impact.

The building stands just across the road from Southwark Park, where some 15,000 women attended a demonstration in the park during the ‘Bermondsey uprising’ in 1911.

As honorary treasurer of the Women’s Labour League, Ada Salter organised strike relief – a daily meal for 50,000 strikers and their families. 

Actor and Patron of the Salter Centenary, Dame Judi Dench, 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.”

Ada Salter became Mayor of Bermondsey in 1922 – the first female mayor of a London borough and the first Labour woman to be elected as a mayor in Britain. 

She also served as a Bermondsey borough councillor and represented Bermondsey West on the London County Council. 

By the end of the 1930s, the borough was equipped with a public health service, palatial baths and wash-houses, an ambitious slum-clearance and housing programme, playgrounds and had seen the planting of thousands of trees. 

Throughout her political career she never wavered in her belief that an attractive urban environment was vital to the health and welfare of the people, and should be accessible to all.

English Heritage’s Rebecca Preston said:“Ada believed that gardens and playgrounds were integral to a total public welfare programme. 

“Her open spaces were not just green but ablaze with colour: not least from new strains of hardy dahlia – the ‘Bermondsey Gem’ and the ‘Rotherhithe Gem’ – grown by the borough gardeners in their hundreds.”

Pictured top: Dame Judi Dench holds the blue plaque dedicated to Ada Salter (Picture: English Heritage)