Departures of note

In 1834, Anne Lister and Ann Walker took communion together on Easter Sunday at Holy Trinity Church in York, a ceremony the two women considered their marriage, though it had no legal recognition. The church now bears a rainbow plaque commemorating the event, described as the site of the first lesbian marriage in Britain. Lister, a landowner from Shibden Hall in Calderdale, had long lived openly by the standards of her time, dressing entirely in black, managing a colliery, and being known in some quarters as 'Gentleman Jack'.

Lister inherited the Shibden estate in 1826, but only gained full control of its income after the deaths of her father and aunt in 1836. Her wealth, drawn from agricultural tenancies, town properties, canal and railway shares, mining, and stone quarries, funded both the renovation of Shibden Hall and extensive travel across Europe. She made the first tourist ascent of the Vignemale peak in the French Pyrenees in 1838, and in 1839 set out on her final journey with Walker, traveling through France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Russia, reaching the Caucasus with military escorts due to local unrest.

Lister died of a fever in Kutaisi, Georgia, on 22 September 1840, aged 49. Walker had her body brought back to England, where she was buried in Halifax Minster. Lister left a diary of over five million words, with about one-sixth written in a code she had devised with her first love, Eliza Raine. The code, combining Greek letters, zodiac symbols, and mathematical signs, was deciphered decades later by John Lister, the last inhabitant of Shibden Hall, who hid the diaries behind a panel rather than burn them as advised. The diaries, once thought a hoax due to their frankness, were added to the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 2011.