Anne Lister: the real Gentleman Jack, her diaries, Ann Walker and the York church

Anne Lister was a Yorkshire landowner who kept one of the longest and most candid diaries in the English language. She wrote about running her estate, her travels and her money, and, in a private code, about the women she loved. Two hundred years later the diary made her famous: first through a 1988 book, then a BBC film, then the series Gentleman Jack. Below: who Anne Lister was, her marriage to Ann Walker in York, and where you can still follow her story.

Who was Anne Lister?

Anne Lister was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, on 3 April 1791. In 1826 she inherited the Shibden Hall estate on the edge of Halifax from her uncle. After her father and aunt died in 1836 she controlled more of its income, and in 1838 she added a Gothic library tower to the house. She traveled widely in Europe and, in 1838, made the first tourist ascent of the Vignemale in the Pyrenees. (Not a hobby most landowners of the 1830s picked up.)

Some people called her “Gentleman Jack”, and later the name was generally used unkindly. Her diary shows she loved women, and she wrote the details in code so that almost no one else could read them.

A short timeline

Year	Event
1791	Born in Halifax, 3 April
1806	Begins her diary
1826	Inherits Shibden Hall from her uncle
1834	Takes communion with Ann Walker at Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, York, Easter Sunday 30 March
1838	Makes the first tourist ascent of the Vignemale in the Pyrenees; adds a Gothic tower to Shibden Hall
1840	Dies of a fever at Kutaisi, in present-day Georgia, 22 September, while traveling with Ann Walker
1841	Buried in Halifax Minster, 29 April

For what else was going on in the world while she lived, see the longer timeline further down this page.

The secret diary of Anne Lister

The diary is the reason we know her at all. Lister began it in 1806 and kept it until she died. It runs to about five million words in 26 volumes. Roughly a sixth is in a code she devised with an early companion, Eliza Raine, using a mix of the Greek alphabet, zodiac signs, punctuation and mathematical symbols. The coded passages are where she wrote about sex and love.

Late in the 19th century a descendant, John Lister, and his friend Arthur Burrell cracked the code. Burrell advised burning the diaries. John Lister didn’t; he hid them behind a panel at Shibden Hall. (Thank goodness for that.) Selections were finally published by Helena Whitbread in 1988 and 1992, and in 2011 the diaries were added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Anne Lister and Ann Walker

Ann Walker was born in 1803 at Crow Nest in Lightcliffe, near Shibden, and was co-heir to her family’s estate. She and Lister had met only now and then until July 1832, when Lister began courting her. They exchanged vows on 10 February 1834 and rings on 27 February.

On Easter Sunday, 30 March 1834, the two women went together to Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, in York, and took communion side by side. To anyone else in the church it was an ordinary Easter service. To them it was a wedding. The union had no legal recognition. Walker moved into Shibden Hall that September, the two traveled together, and Walker was with Lister when she died in Georgia in 1840. She had Lister’s body brought home to Halifax for burial. Walker died at Lightcliffe in 1854.

Holy Trinity, Goodramgate: Anne Lister’s church in York

Holy Trinity is a small medieval church on Goodramgate, about five minutes’ walk from York Minster. Parts of it date from the 12th century, and inside it still has its old box pews. It’s been cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust since 1972.

In 2018 York Civic Trust put a rainbow-edged plaque outside to mark the 1834 communion. Its first wording called Lister a “gender-nonconforming entrepreneur” and didn’t mention that she was a lesbian. After objections it was replaced in February 2019. The new plaque reads:

Anne Lister 1791–1840 of Shibden Hall, Halifax. Lesbian and Diarist; took sacrament here to seal her union with Ann Walker. Easter 1834.

It’s a small church and an easy one to walk past, so look for the plaque by the gate. Our guide to things to do in York shows how to fit it into a walk with the Minster and the Shambles, about five minutes further on.

Gentleman Jack: the TV series

Sally Wainwright, who grew up in Sowerby Bridge near Halifax, created and wrote Gentleman Jack for the BBC and HBO. Suranne Jones played Anne Lister and Sophie Rundle played Ann Walker. The first series of eight episodes premiered on HBO in April 2019 and on BBC One in May 2019. The second series aired in 2022. HBO cancelled the show on 7 July 2022 after two series.

The series is built on the diaries, and it uses real places:

Location	Used for
Shibden Hall, Halifax	Anne Lister’s home, as in life
Sutton Park, North Yorkshire	Ann Walker’s home
Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York	The 1834 communion scene
Goodramgate and Precentor’s Court, York	The final scenes of series one
Duncombe Place and Minster Yard, York	Street scenes

The theme song, also called “Gentleman Jack”, is by the Yorkshire folk duo O’Hooley & Tidow. They first released it in 2012, years before the series.

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister (2010)

Nine years before Gentleman Jack, BBC Two broadcast The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister on 31 May 2010, with Maxine Peake as Lister. If you want to watch both, start with the 2010 film: it covers her younger years, so it sets up the series nicely.

Visiting Shibden Hall

Shibden Hall, Lister’s home, is now a museum run by Calderdale Council, on the edge of Halifax. The house was first recorded in 1420 and opened as a museum in 1934; the estate around it has been a public park since 1926. Visitor numbers more than trebled after Gentleman Jack. Not many of Lister’s own belongings survive, but it’s the house she lived in and altered. Check Calderdale Museums’ site for current opening days before you go.

Halifax is in West Yorkshire, south-west of York, and works best as a day trip of its own. Anne Lister is also buried in Halifax Minster.

Anne Lister and the other women of Yorkshire

Lister is one of several Yorkshire women who lived on their own terms in an age that didn’t make it easy. Her lifetime overlapped with the Brontë sisters, who grew up at Haworth in the same corner of West Yorkshire (see our guide to the Brontë sisters). Two centuries earlier, Lady Anne Clifford held Skipton Castle, where her motto, “Desormais”, is still carved over the gate (see our guide to Bolton Abbey and Skipton Castle).

Anne Lister on our trip

Our October 2027 Yorkshire trip follows several women who lived and wrote on their own terms, and Anne Lister is one of them: we tell her story in York, where she and Ann Walker took communion in 1834. On Thursday 7 October, after the group visit to York Castle Museum, the afternoon is free, and Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, is one of the suggested choices. We don’t go to Shibden Hall on this trip. It’s in the opposite direction from everything else we do that week, so if Shibden is a must for you, it’s worth adding a day in Halifax before or after.