She was the eldest child of Joseph Plymley (1716–1802) of the Bank House, Longnor, and Diana, née Flint (1725–1779), a member of the Shropshire gentry family of Corbett.
[1] A large number of water colour paintings, diaries and study notebooks authored by Plymley have survived and are now held by Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury, UK.
Several of these people either visited or stayed with the Plymley family, giving an opportunity for candid and informal accounts, including of radicalism among the cultured elite.
Other people she described for their character and conversation included Josiah Wedgewood,[5] radical clergyman Reverend Archibald Alison, architect Charles Bage, botanist Theophilus Houlbrooke and playwright and philanthropist Hannah More.
As a result, she describes seeing some of William Herschel's telescopes in 1796, the first trials of Richard Trevithick's steam engine in Penzance in 1803 and meeting the Ladies of Llangollen in 1792.