This miniature statue, high up on a building, has the dubious honour of being Newcastle upon Tyne’s only statue of a non-royal woman. In fact, I can be even more specific: it’s Newcastle’s only statue of a woman who isn’t Queen Victoria.

The subject is Dame Eleanor Allan, who died in 1709. She is commemorated as a philanthropist who founded an eponymous school, initially for providing for the education of sixty poor local children per year. Remarkably for the time, these weren’t all boys: a third of the places were reserved for girls. These days, her schools charge about £15k per year.

As with many historical figures, Dame Allan doesn’t necessarily live up to the moral standards of the twenty-first century: her wealth came from the tobacco trade, which was of course money earned in large part of the back of slave labour on American plantations.

Dame Allan is, perhaps, an unfitting choice given that Newcastle’s most famous statue is probably that of Charles Grey, most famous for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. But then, to only have a single woman recognised in a city with such a storied history of famous women is also unfitting. But who am I to say?