TEA room owner and Wellington town councillor Nancy Powell-Brace is calling for a new road on the planned Bagley Road housing estate in Rockwell Green to be named after a local war heroine.

Nancy has suggested the idea to Somerset West and Taunton Council after a conversation with a woman who had watched the film ‘Odette’ on television.

Odette Hallowes was a member of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and spied for the British behind enemy lines in France during the Second World War.

Nancy said: “She was recruited to the SOE during the two years she lived in Whiteball caring for her mother-in-law, Mrs Sansom, and returned to recuperate after her release from Ravensbruk concentration camp. Odette said that in her darkest times during solitary confinement she would close her eyes and remember the people and views of Somerset, and how kind the county had been to her. It was one of the significant images which helped her get through torture and imprisonment.”

Nancy, who owns Odette’s tea rooms in High Street, Wellington, is hoping to take the idea of naming a road after Odette Hallowes further.

Nancy would like other roads named after Second World War heroes or heroines, members of the SOE, local VIPs or individuals who sponsored Wellington Monument.

Anyone who would like to support the campaign can visit change.org and sign the petition at ‘Recognise Odette Hallowes in her favourite area of England’.

Bovis Homes plans to build 205 properties on the site, including 51 affordable homes, after Somerset West and Taunton Council gave planning permission in January.

Access to the site will be via two junctions on Exeter Road, which joins the busy A38 at a roundabout at the south-west corner of the site.