The University of Westminster café on Little Titchfield Street has been renamed by students via a Twitter poll as the ‘Mary Lines Café’ to celebrate the former Westminster athlete.
Following the reveal of the lightbox on the third plinth at 309 Regent Street, the Writing Between the Lines project has overseen the upgrade of the Little Titchfield Street café to honour Westminster’s former athletes.
The Writing Between the Lines project, run by Professor Guy Osborn, Professor at Westminster Law School, Dr Hannah Copley, Lecturer in Creative Writing, and Anna McNally, Senior Archivist, aims to highlight stories from Westminster, and its predecessor, Regent Street Polytechnic, that have previously been overlooked or untold.
Competing in the 1921 Women’s Olympiad and forming half of the English team, ten female athletes from Westminster dominated the games. Mary Lines was the star in Monte Carlo, winning five gold medals, including three overall victories in the 60 metres and 250 metres races, and the long jump. The rest of the English team also dominated the Olympiad, winning medals in every event except the 800 metres and the 75 metre hurdles.
Marking 100 years since the event, the Writing Between the Lines project involves ten student poets celebrating the stories and achievements such as those of successful women, many of which have been forgotten. These interventions will be performed, displayed, and published at the café to honour its renaming, which will begin to rectify an absence of acknowledging women in Westminster’s sporting history.
The renaming of the café was down to the students, in which a Twitter poll was put up with some suggested names. These included: ‘The Green Room’, as the main lecture theatre was a famous venue for bands in the 1960s, and ‘Law and Order’, with the Little Titchfield campus hosting Westminster’s Law School. ‘The Mary Lines Café’ won by a 56.5% majority vote.
Commenting on the renaming, Professor Guy Osborn said: “The renaming of the cafe celebrates an important and somewhat overlooked part of the University's history, and starts to give Mary Lines and these amazing women some well-deserved recognition. This will be followed up by some superb student writing inspired by this, via Hannah Copley's work on the Between the Lines project.”
Find out more about the Writing Between the Lines project.
Find out more about our history in the Women’s Olympiad on Westminster’s Records and Archives website.
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