Blanche Heriot

Blanche Heriot was a legendary heroine from Chertsey, Surrey, whose story was brought to a wider public in two works by the Chertsey-born early Victorian writer Albert Smith.

"As a native of Chertsey," wrote Henry Turner in Clement Scott's magazine The Theatre, "he was naturally acquainted with the local legend of the heroic girl who, in order to gain time for her lover's pardon to arrive, and so save his head from 'rolling on the Abbey mead,' clung to the clapper of the enormous bell in the belfry tower, and thereby attained her object."

The Irish actress Maria Honner "was the heroine and her portrait (life-size) was on every hoarding in London, swinging to and fro with her hair streaming in the wind.

"[1] In 1843 Smith published The Wassail-Bowl: A Comic Christmas Sketchbook, Volume II[2] of which included a short story, "Blanche Heriot: A Legend of Old Chertsey Church", on the same subject as his play of the previous year.

With only five minutes to go before curfew bell will toll, Herrick is seen by townsfolk approaching Laleham ferry, half a mile away, on his return from London.

Albert Smith completes the story with a reference to the motto inscribed around the band of the Curfew Bell, "Ora mente pia pro nobis, Virgo Maria".