Katherine Plymley

Katherine Plymley (baptised 31 January 1758 – 2 September 1829) was a diarist, traveller, painter and naturalist who recorded life in Shropshire, England, between 1791 and 1827. The sisters were educated at home and were involved in their father’s apothecary business. Neither married but they helped care for their brother's 13 children from his two wives. They were particularly involved in the education of these children. Plymley died on 2 September 1829 and is buried in Leebotwood. She kept up with scientific developments and, through her scholarship, was in communication with academics including Frederick William Hope. who campaigned against slavery; several of her earlier diaries are full of accounts of campaigns and progress towards the abolition of the slave trade. Other people she described for their character and conversation included Josiah Wedgewood, radical clergyman Reverend Archibald Alison, architect Charles Bage, botanist Theophilus Houlbrooke and playwright and philanthropist Hannah More. Her accounts also give insight into the attitudes and preoccupations of society.

Her travel journals include accounts of repeated visits to London and Bath, a tour of North Wales, and travels to Oxford, Cambridge and Penzance. As a result, she describes seeing some of William Herschel's telescopes in 1796, the first trials of Richard Trevithick's steam engine in Penzance in 1803 and meeting the Ladies of Llangollen in 1792.

The study notebooks provide an account of her lifelong programme of self-improvement from 1781 onwards. She concentrated on topics such as religion, education, moral philosophy and biography, and in her notebooks recorded both extracts from books she had read and her commentary on them. She wrote about the position of unmarried women, and strongly held that girls should be educated.

Legacy There was an exhibition of her paintings in 1997 in Shrewsbury Museum and several are now on permanent display there.