Whenever I visit Dora House I think about what a generous thing Cecil Thomas did gifting the Society his home in his will - I don’t think any can afford to leave our house any more but maybe something small in our wills. Several of us have done this already and Caroline has more information on Legacy Giving.
I have been on boards and committees at the Society for almost 20 years now and the spirit of the Society and Dora house has always been there - a generous and welcoming place for sculptors to come together, support each other, make friends and talk about tools and processes. Dora House has rooted my practice for almost a lifetime.
There are many highlights - being on juries and seeing so much new sculpture, sitting in the damp basement and freezing rooms with successive boards discussing how to build a Society fit for the future; and of course working so closely with trustees, members and Caroline Worthington who has led the capital project, the restoration and the Society so very brilliantly.
I have a lot of happy memories from the lead up and restoration of the building, as part of the Saving Dora House project (2022) but my highlights are those involving the materials - getting up on the roof to discuss the stonework, visiting HG Matthews to see how they made and colour-matched our bricks, seeing how our balconies were being restored alongside gates from Hampton Court and seeing how the front door being completely remade at Chatham Historic Docks.
Ahead of the Year of the Home in 2026 when we celebrate the Society's 50 years at Dora House, we asked members to share with us their personal memories of Dora House. We will be sharing them throughout 2026 as part of a programme of this milestone, marked also by the delivery of our project Creating a Home for Sculptors. If you have a memory you would like to share, you can still do so via this link.
