Elizabeth Phillips Hughes (1851-1925)
1/6: Born in Carmarthen, Hughes had little formal education as a child, although she did later attend private school in Cheltenham, which led her to becoming a teacher at Cheltenham Ladies’ College.

2/6: Aged 30, she attended Newnham College, Cambridge, becoming the first woman to take first-class honours in Moral Sciences there. In 1884, she was appointed the first principal of Cambridge Training College for Women (later named Hughes Hall, in her honour).

3/6: Retiring in 1899, she returned to Wales to live in Barry with her younger brother, but she did not retire from her interests in education and reform. She toured the USA in 1901 and later that year became a visiting professor in English at the University of Tokyo.

4/6: She visited China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Germany and spoke at the National Union of Women Workers in 1903. In 1917, she ran a Red Cross hospital in Glamorgan, for which she received the MBE.

5/6: Hughes had a lifelong interest in education for women; writing a pamphlet in 1894 entitled ‘The Educational Future of Wales’, helping to found a teachers’ college in Barry in 1914 and being the only woman on the committee which established the University of Wales in 1920.

6/6: An incredible woman by any definition, Hughes was also a proficient mountain climber and had scaled the Matterhorn at the age of 48. She died in Barry in 1925 aged 74. Her birthplace in Carmarthen is now marked by a blue plaque.