Description | It was in 1948 that the G.E. Fellowship first approached the Nuneaton Borough Council with the suggestion that the site of ‘blitzed’ Dempster House, in Church Street, Nuneaton, should be preserved as a Memorial Garden. The Borough Council approved, and a competition was organised among members of the Institute of Landscape Architects for the best design of a Garden of Memory and a George Eliot Memorial Garden. The joint winners were Miss Mary Braendle and Mr. Ronald Sims. Permission was given by the Hon. Mrs. L.C.S. Fitzroy Newdegate, of Arbury Hall, Nuneaton, to remove the granite obelisk – which her father had erected near the birthplace, South Farm – to the new Gardens. It is at this Memorial that members of the George Eliot Fellowship gather once a year to do honour to the memory of the novelist |