Novelist Townsend Warner’s statue for Dorchester cast in bronze

Work to erect the first statue of a non-royal woman in a town has passed a major milestone with the figure being cast in bronze.

Visible Women crowdfunded for the sculpture of novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner which will be installed on a bench in Dorchester town centre.

It is the work of artist Denise Dutton, who also created the Mary Anning statue in Lyme Regis.

The unveiling, outside Goulds department store in South Street, has been scheduled for 14 December.

In a Facebook post, the charity said the cast was “currently cooling off after the pour, and then the real magic begins — piecing her together and finessing all those beautiful details”.

Sylvia Townsend Warner was a contemporary of Virginia Woolf and lived in Dorset with her long-term partner, Valentine Ackland in the early 20th Century.

The £60,000 life-size statue will sit on a new public bench, with a cat at the writer’s feet – a reference to Townsend Warner’s love of cats.

The charity previously said the animal would be based on Susie, a locally famous cat with more than 10,000 followers on Facebook.

But complaints about its appearance while it was still in the wax stage of the casting process prompted the charity to distance itself from the popular feline.