Amazing discovery at Dean Heritage Centre
We have discovered Catherine Drew poems in the collection that we did not know were there!
Catherine Drew was born in 1784 into a labouring-class family and lived next to Gunn’s Mill. She later moved to Littledean Woodside (now part of Cinderford) after her marriage to John Drew in 1806. Catherine became a popular poet and was known as the Forest poetess. She began writing poetry from a young age, and in 1841, with the support of local people, her only published book was produced. Considering her lack of education, her success as a poet is remarkable and inspiring. These poems give us a unique insight into the changing times of the early 1800s.
The Collections Review, part of our NLHF-funded project we are running this year, is allowing us more time to look at and catalogue documents and objects in the Dean Heritage Centre collection. We got out an old box of documents to catalogue onto our museum's database, including a document listed as ‘19th century manuscript poems anon……’ and behold, we immediately recognised the paper and writing as Catherine Drew's poetry. Staff and volunteers were hugely surprised and excited!
The reason we were able to identify the poems is because of the Forest of Dean Writers Collection project to archive and promote Forest of Dean authors’ work. We were grateful to a descendant of Catherine Drew, Michael Wright from America, who kindly sent us a collection of items that had been handed down through the generations. This included a newspaper clipping from the Dean Forest Mercury in 1954 stating that a Forestry Commission employee at Whitemead Park found some poems by Catherine Drew that he would like to share with readers. The newspaper printed ‘The tender mother’s soliloquy…’ and ‘Amidst the trees…’ Until we received this newspaper clipping, we did not know about these poems, and we did not know what happened to them.
We recognised the poems as written by Catherine Drew herself, as they were written on the same paper with the same handwriting as other poems sent by Michael Wright. We also discovered another verse that was not printed in the newspaper.
Project Manager Jason Griffiths said, “This is such an exciting find and adds to our understanding of Catherine as a poet. Are there perhaps more of her poems out there waiting to be discovered?”
For the next couple of weeks, we will exhibit several amazing objects from our Catherine Drew archive of materials. This includes Catherine’s never-before-displayed nightcap, which was taken as a keepsake to America by her son when he emigrated in 1870, a very rare original copy of her 1841 poetry collection, and newly rediscovered handwritten poetry manuscripts.
For more information on the Forest of Dean Writers Collection, go to the Dean Heritage Centre website: https://www.deanheritagecentre.org/forest-of-dean-writers-collection
For more information on Catherine Drew, go to the Reading the Forest website: https://www.readingtheforest.co.uk/catherinedrew.html
What a lovely piece of detective work. There's real poetry in how these poems came home: a box catalogued only as "19th century manuscript poems anon," a 1954 Dean Forest Mercury clipping, and a descendant in America sending the keepsakes back — until someone recognized the paper and handwriting across nearly two centuries. That a labouring-class woman born in 1784, with little formal education, became the "Forest poetess" and had her verses rediscovered in 2025 is exactly why local archives and patient cataloguing matter. It also says something timeless about human expression: where we now reach for emoji combos to capture a feeling in an instant, Catherine reached for quill and ink — and her handwriting proved a more durable…
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What an incredible discovery. Finding previously unknown poems from Catherine Drew adds such an important piece to local literary history, especially considering how inspiring her journey was as a self-taught poet. It’s amazing how preserved handwriting and manuscripts can reconnect us with voices from the past.
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