Thoroton Society events
Programme for 2008
Lectures are normally held at the Nottingham Mechanics, 3 North Sherwood Street, Nottingham NG1 4EZ at 2.45 p.m. This venue has full disabled access and facilities. A bookstall is available from 2.15 p.m. Further information on all events is published in the quarterly Newsletter.
Saturday, 12 January 2008:
Nora Witham lecture
Nick Tomlinson - Picture the Past
Nick Tomlinson is Project Manager of'Picture the Past' based at Heanor Library in Derbyshire. In the past, anyone wanting to view the collections of hundreds of thousands of old images in the libraries and museums of Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham or Nottinghamshire would have had to travel many miles to try and track down the ones they were interested in. This proved to be frustrating and time-consuming for researchers, and a barrier to anyone from farther afield, as well as damaging to the more fragile images from being handled regularly. The collections include photographs, slides, negatives, glass plates, postcards and engravings, recalling the history of our local communities for a hundred years and more.Thankfully, senior staff in four local authorities got their heads together to solve the problem, and the idea of conserving the images using digitisation, whilst at the same time giving people all over the world access to the digitised versions, was conceived. The 'Picture the Past' website was launched in June 2003, and by the end of 2006 over 63,000 pictures had been added. It now attracts over 10,000 visitors every month from all over the world, viewing thousands of pages of images. 'Picture the Past' is a not-for-profit project, making historic images freely available to anyone with access to the Internet via the website at www.picturethepast.org.uk
Saturday, 9 February 2008:
Miles Thoroton Hildyard lecture
Nigel Lowey - St Pancras
St Pancras was a 14-year-old Christian boy, who was martyred in Rome in AD304 by the Emperor Diocletian. In Britain he is better known as a railway station! This lecture is for anyone who has an interest in history, or architecture, or great engineering. It will describe how the fantastic mid-Victorian Gothic railway cathedral came to be built, and how the long-neglected building has recently undergone a breathtaking transformation. From the start the station served our Nottingham Midland Station, and it will continue to do so in the future.
The speaker is Nigel Lowey, who is a Nottingham resident, and whose amateur interest in St Pancras over a period of ten years led to him becoming an expert, described as 'a historian of the buildings'.
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Saturday 8 March, 2008: Maurice Barley lecture
Malcolm Hislop and Michael Lobb - The use of laser scanning in the archaeological
recording of historic buildings
A former University of Nottingham student, Malcolm Hislop is an indirect beneficiary of Maurice Barley's pioneering work that established Nottingham as a centre for the study of historic buildings. He is now a research fellow and project manager with Birmingham Archaeology, where he oversees the unit's historic buildings work. He is author of Medieval Masons in the Shire Archaeology series, and has recently published in the BAR series a study of the fourteenth-century master mason, John Lewyn of Durham.
Michael Lobb, who is Birmingham Archaeology's senior Historic Buildings Officer is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, where he took his first degree, and of the University of York, where he obtained an MA in the Archaeology of Buildings. One of his particular interests is in the application of high-definition laser survey within archaeology, and he has been instrumental in adapting laser scanning to the recording of historic buildings.
The lecture will focus on the historic buildings work carried out by Birmingham Archaeology, with particular regard to the use of laser scanning as a means of recording and interpreting buildings. Recent projects include the grotto at Calke Abbey; the upstanding remains of Valle Crucis Abbey, Denbighshire; Roman fabric below San Giovanni di Laterano, Rome; Byzantine churches at Thisvai, Greece; and the masons' loft in York Minster.
Saturday, 26 April 2008: ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING at Norwell Village Hall
Saturday & Sunday, 24-25 May 2008: Excursion to Swansea - leader Steph Mastoris
The excursion will leave Nottingham early on Saturday morning. Steph
Mastoris, a Thoroton Society member who recently moved to be head of
the National Waterfront Museum at Swansea, will take us around the Museum
and on a walking tour of the maritime quarter on Saturday afternoon.
After overnight in a local hotel we will have a coach tour of Swansea
Bay,
the Gower and lower Swansea Valley on Sunday morning. The excursion will
arrive back on Sunday evening. The Museum (http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/swansea/)
is part of the National Museum of Wales. There are three elements to
the building: a former dockside
warehouse, originally built in 1901, a suite of new exhibition galleries,
and a central foyer connecting the two. Internal features and facilities
were designed to the highest specifications to provide a home for the
national treasures that tell the story of industry and innovation in
Wales.
Wales was one of the earliest and most heavily industrialized nations on earth. The country has reaped the benefits, but also suffered the consequences. At the National Waterfront Museum you can be plunged into poverty, wallow in wealth, dabble with danger, and even risk your health! Experience noise, grime, high finance, upheaval, consumerism and opportunity.
Thursday, 29 May 2008: Excursion to Newstead Abbey - leaders John Beckett and Rosalys Coope)
This half-day visit to one of Nottingham's best known country house is a must for members, as they will be allowed in free! It will begin with a three-part talk (each part very brief) about the house (Rosalys Coope), the families (John Beckett) and the Newstead Collections (Haidee Jackson, curator). There will be guided tours of the house, followed by tea. Providing the weather is fine, there will be an opportunity to visit the grounds in the immediate vicinity of the house, when John Beckett will explain some of his new findings about the way in which the estate developed from 1926. Newstead's most famous owner was, of course, the 6th Lord Byron, the poet, born 220 years ago in 1788. His influence can still be seen at Newstead, but the story of the house since he sold it in 1819 is just as interesting, and will be discussed on this excursion.
Wednesday, 18 June 2008 : Excursion to Nottingham University Manuscripts and Special Collections - leader Dorothy Johnston
During the evening of 18 June the University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections Department will welcome Thoroton members to view the collections in their new accommodation at King's Meadow Campus. The move from the Hallward Library on main campus was made in 2006. The new store, a converted television studio, provides about 8km of shelving to house some 3 million documents and 60,000 rare books. The University began the collection in the 1930s, and the national significance of its major family and estate archives has been recognized in the award of designation status by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. The collections include records of local business, trades unions, ecclesiastical and other organizations, literary and private papers, as well as archives of the University and its members.
Dorothy Johnston, Keeper of Manuscripts and Special Collections, will provide an introduction to the service. Visitors will be able to see some items on display in the Reading Room and look behind the scenes at the store, conservation and digitization facilities. Of special interest to the Society is the East Midlands Collection for Local Studies, which contains books, pamphlets and periodicals on the region’s historic counties. Its older titles form part of the extensive Special Collections (Printed Books), held with the archives in the reserved store.
Saturday, 12 July 2008: Excursion to Grantham and east Nottinghamshire Churches - leader Alan Langton
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| St Wulfram’s church (west front), Grantham; courtesy of James Newman, Skyscrapernews.com |
This summer excursion follows the theme of Nottinghamshire Churches, but takes in three counties. We visit first St Wulfram's church, Grantham, Lincolnshire [pictured right], claiming to have the finest steeple in England. A guided tour of the interior will show its original 14th-century stone work and Gilbert Scott's Victorian roof and rood screen. There is some fine Kempe glass contained in the windows. Ruskin is said to have swooned when he first entered the building!
There will be time for lunch in Grantham before we visit Bottesford in Leicestershire. St Mary's church, with another fine steeple, is often known as the 'Lady of the Vale', and our guided tour will show us alabaster tombs of the de Roos and Manners families, predecessors of the Dukes of Rutland. At Colston Bassett, Nottinghamshire, we will be met by the Thoroton Society's own guide, Adrian Henstock, an acknowledged authority on this village and its two churches – the present building constructed in 1892 as a memorial to the wife and son of a former owner of the Hall; and its ruined predecessor, recently rescued from total destruction. We will end with a traditional 'Thoroton tea' at Granby village hall.
Saturday, 6 September 2008: Excursion to Wentworth Castle - leaders Derek and Ceril Little
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| The South Lawn and Palladian Wing of Wentworth Castle |
South Yorkshire’s only grade I listed garden is at Wentworth Castle in Stainborough Park near Barnsley. The Castle is an impressive baroque and Palladian mansion standing high above the M1 motorway. It was built by Thomas Wentworth, who was a collateral descendant of Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Strafford, and who was executed for treason on Charles I’s orders. Thomas had failed to inherit the family estate of Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham. The estate, lacking a direct heir, passed to the second Earl of Strafford’s sister, instead of Thomas, the male cousin. Thereafter there was rivalry between the two branches of the family, not least in the splendour of their respective houses and estates. During the 20th century, after both estates had passed from family ownership into local authority hands, both became teacher-training colleges during the 1950s and 60s.
Wentworth Woodhouse is once again in private ownership and is not open to visitors; while the Castle remains an educational establishment, the Northern College of Adult Residential Education. Together with its park and gardens, it is now open to the public, under the care and restoration of the Wentworth Castle and Stainborough Park Heritage Trust.
Tuesday, 7 October 2008: Keith Train Lecture* in association with the Nottingham Civic Society
Saturday, 18 October 2008: Archaeology lecture.
Henry Chapman - The Hatfield Trackway and Platform: a Neolithic ceremonial
site in a wetland context
Please note this is the third Saturday in the month.
Saturday, 1 November 2008 ANNUAL LUNCHEON *
Saturday, 8 November 2008: Nottinghamshire History
Lecture
Mark Dawson - Eating and drinking in Nottinghamshire households, 1540-1640
Saturday, 13 December 2008
John Morehen - John Blow, Son
of Newark: A Tercentenary Tribute
Further details of events marked * will be announced in the Thoroton Society Newsletter.