Dame Mary Bolles was born in the reign of Elizabeth I and died, aged 81, on 5 May 1662, in the reign of Charles II. She remains the only woman to have been awarded a baronetcy, in her case the Baronetcy of Nova Scotia, bestowed on her by Charles I in 1635.
She’s probably best known in Wakefield for the Water Tower, which she had constructed to pump a water supply up to Heath Old Hall. There are suggestions that it also supplied Heath Village and possibly an ironworks.
I haven’t found a portrait of her, other than the effigy on her memorial in Ledston Church, so these are my attempts to imagine her as a cavalier lady at the time she became a baronet(ess?). The terms of her will called on her executors to open the Hall to guests and to slaughter as many of her fat sheep and cattle as necessary for the funeral feasting, which was to last six weeks. According to some accounts, she also stipulated that a particular room in the house should be left locked until 50 years after her death.
The Old Hall fell into ruin after being used as a supply store during World War II, but the original door of Dame Mary’s room, reputedly a haunted door, can be seen in Wakefield Museum.