What’s On

20 Feb

Marlborough History Society AGM

We are lucky to have John Chandler, the well-known and highly respected local historian, to speak to us following the formal business at 7.30pm.

20 Feb

Everywhere’s History: The Wiltshire VCH, Past, Present and Future

TALK: The Victoria County History project, as its name suggests, originated in the 19th century, although work towards publication only began in Wiltshire following a meeting in 1947. Since then five general volumes of county history, and thirteen volumes of parish histories have been published, with three more in progress and another four or five projected but not yet started, in order to complete its coverage of the county. Marlborough, Ramsbury, Aldbourne and the surrounding parishes were covered in a volume (12) published in 1983, and have proved of great value to historians of the area as a reference tool for more than forty years.

SPEAKER:  John Chandler has been involved with the history of Wiltshire all his working life, and has published books on the Marlborough area, Vale of Pewsey and many other places. He is also the proprietor of local publisher Hobnob Press.  He has worked in a freelance capacity as researcher and editor for the  VCH for the past twenty years, in Wiltshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, and will describe the project’s background, rationale, and its value for local historians.

20 Mar

The Two Longest Reigns Part II: Work and Leisure in the Reigns of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II

TALK: The Victorians are often credited with inventing leisure. The demands of the average workday at the beginning of the reign precluded the vast majority of people from enjoying leisure pursuits; by its end all but the poorest were able to attend sporting events and professional entertainments. In the workplace, conditions improved from the horrors of indentured child labour to the new employment opportunities afforded to women by the telegraph, the telephone and the typewriter. In Queen Elizabeth’s reign we were also to see striking changes, with the decline of manufacturing, but the rise of service industries made possible by the computer; and a leisure scene that saw the growth of mass tourism, the spread of restaurant chains that allowed all classes to ‘eat out’,  the opportunity for sporting heroes and heroines and popular musicians to acquire hitherto undreamed of wealth and status, and the decline of the movies and live entertainment as television took its dominant role in our everyday lives.

SPEAKER: Patrick Hickman-Robertson, OBE, is the author of a number of best-selling books on social history and on cinema. He has broadcast and lectured on these topics on both sides of the Atlantic. Co-founder and a former chairman of the Ephemera Society, he has a special interest in ‘the minor transient documents of everyday life’ as evidence of the past we all share.

His first lecture for us in 2022 was very popular and he now returns for another look at “The Two Longest Reigns”.

10 Apr

A History of Tottenham House

TALK: Tottenham House was originally constructed in 1575 as a replacement for Wolfhall, which had fallen into ruin after the execution of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset.  Since then it has seen many events and changes, including a catastrophic fire in 1712, a new design as a brick-built villa by Lord Burlington in 1720, remodelling as an H-shaped Italianate house, and then radical overhauling with the construction of two massive sweeping wings. The grounds and park have also been continuously re-landscaped, incorporating designs of William Kent and Capability Brown.  This upgrading and remodeling continues today, ensuring that Tottenham House remains an enduring feature in the ancient Savernake landscape.

SPEAKER: Graham Bathe was professionally engaged in countryside management and wildlife conservation for 40 years, working for charities and national agencies, in this country and overseas. He is especially interested in the relationship between landscapes and traditional land management systems, and has particular expertise on the history of common land, village greens and ancient rights of way. He has made a 20-year study on the history of Savernake, and its principal houses of Wolfhall, The Brails and Tottenham.

15 May

The Other Slave Trade: Abolition in East Africa and the Indian Ocean in the 19th Century

Talk: Most of us know a lot about the transatlantic slave trade, and the triangle that took goods from Europe to West Africa, slaves from there to North and South America, and goods such as sugar, cotton and tobacco back to Europe. In this talk Stuart Laing takes us far from Marlborough to give an account of what is often called the ‘Arab Slave Trade’, about slaves taken from East and Central Africa and traded to the Gulf, the Red Sea, Persia and even India. Britain was active in securing an end to this trade, although slaves, being the descendants of slaves, continued to be found in Arab households until well into the 20^th century. The lecture concludes with remarks on the labour market in the Gulf today.

Speaker: Stuart Laing had a first career in the British Foreign Service, serving in Saudi Arabia, Prague and in Cairo. and then as Ambassador in Muscat (2002-05), and later in Kuwait (2005-08). He was Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (2008 – 2018) and now researches, lectures and writes on Mediterranean, Arab and East African history. He is co-author of a book on Omani-British history, Unshook Till the End of Time, and has published a biography of Tippu Tip, the Arab-African ivory trader.

18 Sep

The Free Family of Marlborough

TALK: The Free family had  major businesses in the town from over one hundred years ago, the family having moved to the area in the 19th century to “harvest” the sarsens scattered over the Marlborough Downs. Later generations branched into other fields and the Free family also took an active part in the affairs of the Borough. Their name is remembered in Free’s Avenue on Marlborough Common.

SPEAKER:  David Chandler was born in Marlborough and started his working life in the family saddlery business which used to supply the many racing stables in the area. We are remembered with a “Yard”  to the side of the White Horse bookshop where my great great grandfather Thomas Chandler opened the first shop in the mid 1800’s.

16 Oct

Ramsbury, the Town That Never Quite was: The 1100-year Story of Marlborough’s Kennet Valley Neighbour

TALK: Seven miles from Marlborough – the classic distance between medieval markets – Ramsbury shares the same Kennet Valley environment as its neighbour but has a very different story to tell. Once the seat of Anglo-Saxon bishops and now the hub of a vibrant modern community, the intervening centuries have seen it repeatedly re-fashion itself in response to the changing economic and social demands of the wider world.

SPEAKER: Rowan Whimster has lived in north Wiltshire for more than 30 years, first in Marlborough and since 2006 down the road in Ramsbury. He began his career as an aerial archaeologist and later worked with English Heritage, the National Trust and some of the other organisations who look after this country’s most precious places. More locally, he is Trustee of the Merchant’s House and the author of Ramsbury: A Place and its People.

20 Nov

The Boy Ghost of Bowood

TALK: Nine year old William Granville Petty, son of the earl of Shelburne, sadly unexpectedly died at Bowood House near Calne in Wiltshire in January 1778 following a short illness.

Historical research is used to uncover a series of extraordinary happenings that can only be described as “supernatural”. It poses unsettling questions within an apparent “Age of Reason” and “Enlightenment”.

The boy William had apparently run out to meet his doctor after he had died. Dr Christopher Allsup witnessed the visitation and swore to his dying day it was real. He related it in his death bed confession to the Reverend Joseph Townsend, rector of St John the Baptist Pewsey. Allsup later had the White Horse cut on Cherhill Down: no-one knows why.

William had apparently foreseen his funeral procession in a dream which he related to his tutor, Dr Joseph Priestley. Priestley was tutor to William and his brother John, companion to the earl of Shelburne and had discovered oxygen in his laboratory at Bowood 3½ years previously.

The story of the visitation and the uncanny dream was published in the reputable journal, “The Kaleidoscope: or, Literary and Scientific Mirror”. It re-appeared in the autobiography of the anti-slavery campaigner, Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, who heard the story from her mother who knew Joseph Priestley’s wife Mary.

SPEAKER: Nick Baxter MA lectures widely on local history subjects and leads guided walks. For the past three years he has tutored on Discovering Marlborough’s History for Marlborough College Summer School.