THE target of raising £475,000 for a memorial to Mary Seacole, the Jamaican Crimean War nurse, is to be substantially reduced after St Thomas’ Hospital in London recently promised to provide a site on its grounds and the construction company Sir Robert McAlpine offered to build the monument at cost price.

The appeal chairman, Lord Soley, the former West London MP, said it was impossible to say by how much the target would come down, but said he believed it would be a very significant amount.

The offer of a site of no less than 10 m2 (107½ ft2) by St Thomas’ will mean a vastly reduced cost of acquiring the land. The grounds of the hospital, which is on Westmister Bridge across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, is already home to the Florence Nightingale Museum.

The McAlpine offer is subject to the company examining the design but Lord Soley said the latest developments meant that it was now possible to start talking about the detailed look of the memorial, which will include educational elements as well as being a tribute to Seacole.

The commission brief for the memorial is currently being developed by Philomena Davidson, of the Davidson Arts Partnership, after a £10,000 donation from Barclays for this purpose.

On top of this, the appeal has raised more than £13,000 and is to raffle or auction two return air tickets to Jamaica donated by Virgin Atlantic, along with accommodation offered by a leading hotel group.

The fundraising consultant, Wootton George Consulting, is to assist the appeal in raising more money, with its fees paid by the Royal College of Nursing.

Seacole is currently being recognised as one of ten “Great Britons” in a set of Royal Mail stamps. Earlier this year the Queen officially named the new Health Building at Brunel University in Uxbridge, Middlesex, the Mary Seacole Building.

Mary Seacole was something of a celebrity in the 1850s, having made her own way to the front in the Crimea and setting up a rest, refreshment and nursing post for troops, and also attending to the wounded on the battlefields. Seacole, whose late husband was a godson of Lord Nelson, returned to London with medals from both sides of the war but penniless. An appeal, supported by dukes, generals and The Times, raised enough money to support her and she also made money from her autobiography. Seacole then settled into a quiet life and died in 1881, aged 76. Her obituary appeared in The Times.

After fading from the public mind, her recognition has grown over the past few decades, thanks initially to the efforts of nurses and women’s groups in Jamaica, with an annual wreath-laying ceremony at her refurbished grave in northwest London and the republication of her autobiography.

www.maryseacoleappeal.org.uk