Catherine Payton Phillips

Community and Voluntary Action, Education and Learning, Environment

1724- 1794

Suggested by Vikki Aimers

Vikki says, “Catherine was a quaker minister during the mid 1700s from Dudley, West Midlands. She travelled extensively in England, Wales, Scotland, Holland and the American colonies with her friend, Mary Peisley, at a time when young Quaker women were travelling around the world in groups, preaching and enjoying life. Catherine settled in Redruth at the age of 48 and married William Phillips, a widower, Copper Agent and Cornishman. She was an amateur botanist and natural medicine woman as well as preacher and writer. Her memoirs, printed in 1797 by her stepson, James Phillips, a master printer, are held in the archive at Kresen Kernow.

Catherine’s writing reveals a complex character with a clear vision of the importance of community and caring for the environment. Two of her main ideas were to beautify wastelands and grow fruit trees on common land to feed communities. I think we could learn a lot from some of the simple acts she promoted in her writing. In response to this I have created Kitty’s Orchard, a project that involves collecting apple seeds, nurturing seedlings and to date, giving away over 500 Cornish native apple tree plants. I see it as a way to create an ever growing orchard that shares her beliefs with a wider audience. 

Over the last five years, I have also engaged others with elements of Catherine’s life and work through a travelling interactive art installation, a cabinet of curiosities that invites people to hold objects, read about apples and apple trees, and listen to poetry. All of the things in the cabinet are connected to and informed by Catherine’s writing and every time I undertake a residency with the cabinet I learn new things about her.”