The Easter wedding of Anne Lister and Ann Walker
A church pew, a communion, two women: how Anne Lister and Ann Walker secretly married in York in 1834.
On 30 March 1834, two women knelt side by side in Holy Trinity Church in York, England, and took communion together. For the rest of the congregation, it was an ordinary Easter service. For Anne Lister and Ann Walker, it was their wedding.
Anne Lister, mistress of Shibden Hall near Halifax, was an exceptional figure for her time. She ran her estate like a business, bought a coal mine, climbed peaks in the Pyrenees and wore black instead of frills. In Halifax she was mockingly called "Gentleman Jack". Her heart belonged exclusively to women. She recorded this in diaries that in the end comprised around four million words. She wrote the most intimate passages in a code of her own devising made of Greek letters and algebraic symbols.
Her last great love was Ann Walker, a wealthy heiress from the neighbourhood. The two exchanged rings and made a marriage vow. A wedding was unthinkable, so they looked for another way: taking communion together at Easter was to seal their union before God. Lister noted afterwards that she had prayed for the first time for the happiness of their union. Legally, none of it counted. Apart from her diary, there is no record of the day.
A few months later, Ann Walker moved to Shibden Hall. The two lived openly as a couple and travelled together through Europe. On a journey to the Caucasus, Lister fell ill and died in September 1840 in what is now Georgia. Walker had the body embalmed and brought it back to Halifax.
The diaries only narrowly survived. A relative deciphered the code at the end of the nineteenth century, and a friend advised him to burn everything. Instead, he hid the volumes behind a wall panel. Today they are regarded as a key document of British history, and a rainbow plaque at the church in York commemorates that Easter Sunday. For many, it was the first known lesbian wedding in Britain.