Pioneering women have long since left their mark on Surrey. Adele Waters puts a trio of trailblazers in the spotlight...
Brooklands
Dame Ethel Locke King: motoring pioneer and race track creator (1864 – 1956)
Dame Ethel Locke King is best known as the dynamic force behind the creation and management of the world’s first permanent banked motor racing circuit: Brooklands Motor Course.
Born Ethel Gore-Browne in Tasmania in 1864—while her father was serving as governor—she moved to England and married local landowner Hugh Locke King in 1884, when she was 20, and moved into Brooklands House in Weybridge.
Hugh was a keen supporter of new inventions and was among the first wave of British car owners, although he did not actually drive himself. In contrast, Ethel was an enthusiastic motorist, and her passion for cars seems certain to have been a key influence behind her husband’s decision in 1906 to build a motor racing circuit on his Brooklands estate.
At the time, there was a strict 20 mph speed limit on public roads and limited viewing for car racing spectators, so the aim was to provide British manufacturers and racers with a proper test facility.
Brooklands
However, the project would prove very demanding. Construction quickly became a much larger and costlier task than originally envisioned – weighing in at around £150,000 – and this placed a great strain on Hugh’s health.
After taking control in December 1906, Ethel oversaw the completion of the circuit, fighting off the threat of bankruptcy by securing loans from her family, including her brother Sir Francis Gore-Browne, to save the project.
Fittingly, when Brooklands officially opened on June 17, 1907, it was Ethel who led the parade around the track in her car, ‘Bambo’, making her the first person officially to lap the circuit.
The previous year, she had travelled to Turin to collect the car – an Itala 35/40 – that won the inaugural Targa Florio endurance race in Sicily, and drive it home. She even participated in the first ladies' race at Brooklands in 1908, finishing a close second behind the famous driver Muriel Thompson.
Beyond motoring, Ethel was also a keen flyer – one of the first women to take to the air. After the French pilot Louis Paulhan flew her from Brooklands, she encouraged the development of aviation sheds and flying schools on the estate.
However, it was during World War I that her commitment to Surrey truly shone through. With the spectre of conflict looming, Ethel proposed a large-scale exercise at Brooklands to test the readiness of the Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) and the Territorial Army. On 20th June 1914, a mock battle took place within the circuit, with 600 members of the Surrey VADs showcasing their skills ‘behind the lines’.
For her wartime services – including running a hospital on the estate – Ethel was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1918.
After Hugh’s death in 1926, she became the sole owner of the Brooklands Estate Company and continued to champion her husband’s vision for industry and sport. She sold up in 1936.
Elmbridge Magazine
Professor Daphne Jackson: the UK’s first female professor of physics and an equality champion (1936 – 1991)
Daphne Jackson was just 34 when she made history. In 1971, she was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Surrey, thereby becoming the first female physics professor in the land.
It was a reward for an exceptional academic talent. After graduating in physics from Imperial College London in 1958, the future professor earned her PhD in nuclear physics four years later from Battersea College of Technology, which moved to Guildford and became the University of Surrey in 1966.
A groundbreaking academic, she published 55 papers on the use of nuclear physics in medicine, contributing to the fight against cancer through her work with the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital.
Beyond physics, Professor Jackson was also a passionate supporter of equal opportunities. She noticed that many brilliant women who had taken time away for family, caring or health reasons often struggled to resume their research careers. She viewed this as an “appalling waste of talent and of investment in their initial education”, as well as a significant loss to science.
Too frequently, she noted, capable women were pushed into roles far below their actual ability due to a lack of training opportunities.
As she famously remarked: “Imagine a society that would allow Marie Curie to stack shelves in a supermarket simply because she took a career break.”
And so, in 1985, the professor created a pioneering fellowship scheme that offered women returning to their careers the flexibility of working part-time, combining their research with essential retraining. She also advised the government on science policy, advocating strongly for greater participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths). It was an overall contribution which earned her an OBE in 1987.
Tragically, ironically, Professor Jackson died of cancer in 1991. Yet her vision lives on in the Daphne Jackson Trust, founded the following year, which has helped more than 500 people – both men and women – return to their careers in research and technology, building faithfully on the original vision.
Elmbridge Magazine
Ada Lovelace: the world’s first computer programmer (1815 – 1852)
Lady Ada Lovelace (above) is celebrated globally as a trailblazer in mathematics and science and a foundational figure in modern computing.
Born Augusta Ada Byron, she was the only legitimate child of the famed Romantic poet Lord Byron and his wife Annabella Milbanke. Having separated from her erratic husband, Ada’s mother was determined to ensure that Ada would not follow in her father’s volatile footsteps.
Lady Byron herself had mathematical training – her husband once called her his “Princess of Parallelograms” – and she insisted that Ada be privately tutored in maths and logic, an unusual education for a woman of that era.
Ada embraced her studies, possessing a bright intellect and a love for her work.
In 1833, at the age of 17, she met the renowned British mathematician Charles Babbage at a party and was immediately captivated by his demonstration of a mechanical calculator. The encounter sparked a long working relationship and friendship. In 1837, Babbage designed the analytical engine, a forerunner of the modern computer, described by Ada as ‘poetical science’.
Pausing her studies temporarily in 1835 for her marriage to William King – the future Earl of Lovelace – Ada nonetheless continued with her work whenever domestic duties would allow.
Her most influential contribution came in 1843, when she set out what is regarded as the first computer program: a detailed stepwise sequence of operations designed to solve certain mathematical problems. Biographers referred to her as the ‘prophet of the computer age’. It was her recognition that the analytical engine had the potential to do more than calculate – that it “might act upon other things besides number” – that paved the way for computation.
Sadly, her life was cut short by cervical cancer in 1852 at the young age of 36. As she grew weaker, her devoted husband created wonderful gardens and walkways for her to enjoy at their home in East Horsley.
This was Horsley Towers, designed by Sir Charles Barry, the architect behind the Houses of Parliament. Today it is a beautifully refurbished hotel, the De Vere Horsley Estate.
More widely, Ada’s legacy is preserved by such bodies as the Ada Lovelace Institute, which seeks to ensure that the opportunities generated by data and AI are justly and equitably distributed – a fitting way to honour the intellectual rigour and analytical standards of the woman whose name it bears.
