Current Events

Summer visits 2019

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Information on our summer visits for 2019 appears below following prior circulation to our members. They are now available to non-members to book but require pre-booking using our booking form and paying for in advance (cannot turn up and pay on the day because we need to know in advance numbers attending). Please note not all arrangement details are shown for obvious reasons, but full details will be provided for the requested visits once booking and payment is received.

For details on our very modest subscription rates and how to join please visit our Join Us page. The larger our membership the more influence we can bring over matters of concern, plus being a member means you get notified first so get first choice on our activities, less risk of missing out if a visit becomes fully booked before being released to the general public.


	Guided tour in Oundle - afternoon of Tuesday 25 June This is now fully booked. We will divide into two groups each led by an experienced town guide. Starting at the Old Town Hall town, we will progress westwards taking in the noteworthy buildings en route including Oundle Museum which has won various awards, including Best Volunteer Project, 2018, at the Northants Heritage Awards. The rich history of Oundle includes many exhibits from the Roman, Saxon and Medieval periods. At the end of the tour tea and scones will be provided at a separate location.

	Cromwell Museum, Huntingdon, afternoon of Wednesday 17 July Spaces still available - do not delay Another get-yourself-there trip and various public car parking options available not too far from the location. Cost £6 per person (no refreshments included). To book please complete and return our booking form. We will divide into two groups. One will receive a guided tour of the Museum from the curator, Stuart Orme, whilst the other will have a tour of the old Town Hall nearby. The groups will then swap guides so that we all have a complete experience. The 2 buildings will be visited in the course of about one hour. Refreshments are not provided but there are many cafes, restaurants and pubs close by for us to visit before returning home.

	Treasures of Thorney - afternoon of Thursday 1 August This is now fully booked. Our guide will be Dorothy Halfhide and includes viewing of Thorney Heritage Museum, especially opened for us. A talk from Dorothy on the history of this remarkable HQ of the Duke of Bedford's Thorney estate and model village and current issues. Then a presentation by Paul Sharman, Chief Exec. of the North Level Internal Drainage Board on managing fenland waters. Then a walk to Thorney Abbey followed by a talk on the history of the Abbey. Optional walk close to Abbey to view the Abbey fields and The Green area.

Our speaker season for 2018/2019 is now completed.

Details below is for information purposes only however.......

Can you help us? We are always on the look out for speakers. If you would like to nominate yourself and your subject matter or can recommend a speaker and their subject matter, please contact our talks organiser Jeremy Roberts on telephone 01733 343943 work or 01733 576144 home, and if leaving a message remember to leave your contact details, or email him jeremyroberts.co@btconnect.com. Thank you.

Our previous speakers from prior to season 2018/2019 and their subjects can be found here.

10 September 2018 7.30pm - Breeding Birds, Grazing and Flood Management in the Washes

Our speaker is Charlie Kitchin, site manager of the RSPB Nene Washes Reserve
photo ack RSPB

The Nene Washes were created primarily to act as a flood storage area to protect the surrounding arable land from flooding but they have now emerged as probably the premier nature conservation site in the Peterborough area.

The Washes stretch for thirteen miles from Stanground to Guyhirn, bounded on the southern side by Morton's Leam (created on the orders of Bishop Morton of Ely in the fifteenth century) and on the northern side by the main cut of the river Nene. They cover in all 3,700 acres, including 1,200 acres that are now owned and managed by the RSPB.

The Nene Washes reserve is primarily made up of wetland, with numerous grass fields divided by water filled ditches and washland. The site is still regularly flooded, particularly in winter.

A wide variety of birds are present throughout the year. Breeding species include such national rarities as black-tailed godwits, cranes and spotted crakes, while the site has also been the subject of a pilot reintroduction programme for the corncrake, which has otherwise become extinct in England. Other seasons of the year see gatherings of many wader and wildfowl species, sometimes in huge numbers, together with a wide variety of herons, raptors and owls.

Charlie Kitchin joined the staff of the RSPB in 1985 and has served as site manager for the Nene Washes reserve since 1991. He therefore has an unparalleled knowledge not only of the birds and other species that frequent the site, but also of the intricate drainage and grazing operations that are essential to maintaining its attractiveness for the future.

8 October 2018 7.30pm - Peterborough Cathedral - a Glimpse of Heaven

Special meeting - booking recommended and there is a charge for this event
This will be held at the John Clare Theatre, Peterborough Central Library

Our speaker is Dr Jonathan Foyle

For this special meeting, we are delighted to welcome Dr. Jonathan Foyle, whose splendid book, "Peterborough Cathedral ‐ a Glimpse of Heaven" was published earlier this year as a fitting tribute for its 900th anniversary.

Whether one can lay claim to knowing a lot, or just a little, about the history and architecture of our famous Cathedral, there is always scope for gaining new gems of information and additional insights. Dr Foyle is just the person to provide us with these benefits.

Dr. Foyle grew up locally in Market Deeping and attended the Deepings School. He holds degrees in Architecture, History of Art (M.A.), and Archaeology (Ph.D.) and served for eight years as Curator of Historic Buildings for Historic Royal Palaces. Since then he has expanded the scope of his work as the author of numerous books and articles, together with many appearances as a television presenter, including his "Climbing Great Buildings" series on BBC2. His book about our own Cathedral is one of a series that also includes volumes on Canterbury, Lichfield and Lincoln Cathedrals.

12 November 2018 7.30pm - Annual General meeting followed by
Britain's Hidden Landscapes with Dr Frances Pryor

Our November talk features Dr Francis Pryor who will draw on his latest book, Paths to the Past: Encounters with Britain's Hidden Landscapes, to explain how those landscapes reflect and shape our behaviour. Based on his personal experience as an archaeologist investigating sites right across Britain for over thirty years, he will relate stories of our physical surroundings, both rural and urban, and what they meant to the people who formed them, used them and lived in them.

Peterborians owe Dr Pryor a particular debt of gratitude for his discovery, excavation and presentation of Flag Fen, but his career has covered many different facets. He is a former President of the Council for British Archaeology and has excavated farms, villages and ceremonial sites dating back to at least 3500BC. He appeared frequently on TV's Time Team and is the author of The Making of the British Landscape, Seahenge, and Britain BC and Britain AD, both of which he adapted and presented as Channel 4 series. He has also farmed sheep in the Lincolnshire fens for the past thirty years and has written two novels.

10 December 2018 7.30pm - The Civil War in the Fens with Dr Mike Osborne

The English Civil War was, of course, the struggle between King and Parliament, Cavaliers and Roundheads, that we all learnt about at school. It was also a patchwork in which local interests, grievances and rivalries had significant parts to play. As a cathedral city, Peterborough adhered to the conservative establishment, both in religion and politics, but there were many in the wider locality who took a different view.

The war brought great hardship and suffering but also provided new opportunities for some of the participants, including, in our area, for an obscure country gentleman, Oliver Cromwell, who eventually rose to become monarch in all but name. These circumstances made it inevitable that the Fens would see significant military activity during the course of the war, the remains of which can still be discerned today.

Dr Mike Osborne is a specialist in the study of military structures and, for the duration of the Defence of Britain Project, was its volunteer co-ordinator in the eastern counties. He is the author of many books on the defence of Britain, including Defending Cambridgeshire, Defending Lincolnshire, Pillboxes of Britain and Ireland, and Defending Britain: Twentieth-Century Military Structures in the Landscape. For many years Dr Osborne led the teachers' Peterborough Professional Development Centre (PPDC) at Cottesmore Close.

14 January 2019 7.30pm - 70 Years of Listed Buildings with Dr Melissa Thompson

Until the passage of the Town and Country Planning Act seventy-one years ago, the fate of buildings of architectural merit or historical interest was in most cases a matter of chance, dependent on the good, bad or indifferent intentions of their owners. The Second World War had brought with it a new element of randomness in the form of the depredations of the Luftwaffe.

In the post-war era, it was decided that the protection of meritorious buildings should be a matter of public concern, but the new statutory arrangements were not without controversy. For the owners of property, listing entailed living with a whole new regime of duties, responsibilities and restrictions. There was also wide-ranging public debate about which types and styles of building should warrant consideration within the ever-changing boundaries of public taste. Despite these issues, the arrangements introduced in 1947 have proved to be remarkably resilient.

Dr Melissa Thompson is employed as a Designation Adviser by Historic England. She is therefore ideally placed to guide us through the history of the listing process and to explain the conundrums that it has created.

11 February 2019 7.30pm - The Tavelling Post Office and
40 Years of Nene Valley Railway with Brian White

It's a strange fact that the first railway line to reach Peterborough, in 1845, was not our splendid main line, but the branch of the London and Birmingham Railway that ran in from Blisworth Junction near Northampton. The line prospered and later gained another arm from Rugby, but by the throw-away nineteen sixties and despite the impending designation of Peterborough for new town expansion, the powers that be saw it as an irrelevant relic to be tossed into the rubbish bin of railway history.

That it survived as far as Wansford and then emerged into its new guise as the Nene Valley Railway was the result of the foresight shown by the Peterborough Development Corporation and the commitment of the band of dedicated volunteers who restored, managed and operated the line. Included in that band was, of course, our own long serving Chairman and President, the Rev. Richard Paten.

As well as exhibiting its resident and visiting gems of rolling stock, the NVR also possesses lineside gems in the form of buildings and structures dating from the Victorian era. Most recently, it has purchased for restoration the original station at Wansford, built for the opening of the line and therefore one of the oldest station buildings still surviving anywhere in the country.

The NVR boasts an established collection of historic travelling post offices and international coaches, which will form the basis of a further initiative in the development of the International Travelling Post Office Museum. The Museum is in the final planning stages and is to be built opposite the station building at Ferry Meadows.

Brian White, the curator of the NVR museum and a former GPO employee, is a long serving volunteer and therefore very well qualified to relate the story of the NVR's trials and triumphs and to outline its exciting plans for the future.

11 March 2019 7.30pm - The Roman Soldier from Invasion to Withdrawal with Jed Jaggard

Remarkably, the Roman Army was in continuous existence for over two thousand years from the foundation of Rome in 750 BC to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD. The Roman conquest and occupation of Britain lasted for only a small fraction of that time, from 43-410 AD, during which the Empire stretched from Britain to Syria and from Germany to Morocco with standing armies of around 400,000 men. The sustained planning and effort needed to recruit, train, equip, feed, house, pay, control and deploy such a force is staggering, particularly given the lack of any of the communication aids that we take for granted today.

During the period of occupation, the composition of the army changed greatly, reflecting both economic and social changes within the Empire and the different challenges and threats that it faced. By the time of withdrawal, the classical army, mainly composed of Italian legionaries, had long since become a diverse force recruited from subject peoples right across the Empire and even including mercenaries from outside its borders.

Jed Jaggard has an honours degree in Performing Arts Acting and has specialised in historical re-enactments since 1999, through his company, Up an' at 'em History. He provides bespoke history sessions across the country, promising to educate, interpret, display, entertain and share.

8 April 2019 7.30pm - Vanishing Cambridgeshire with Mike Petty

"In 1925, a group of Cambridge antiquarians set off on a journey into the unknown. They loaded their car with cameras, tripods and glass-plate negatives and their journey took them into a landscape of ancient remains, crumbling churches and dilapidated cottages where residents drank water from wells. While others explored the relics of ancient Egypt, these intrepid explorers never strayed more than a few miles from the magnificent towers of the university town of Cambridge. For this was Cambridgeshire in the inter-war years.

"The explorers ‐ a printer, a doctor, an anatomist and a pathologist ‐ were members of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society and they were reviving a project that had begun at the start of the century. Their mission was to produce a photographic survey of Cambridgeshire, to record both buildings and a way of life, the vanishing landmarks of a region.

"Now Cambridgeshire historian Mike Petty has made a powerful selection of photographs from their pioneering survey to give this insight into a way of life that has disappeared forever. The photographs are supplemented by contemporary reminiscences and newspaper stories that paint a picture in words of the hardship of country life before World War Two. The result is a compelling study of a county that in many ways has changed beyond all recognition ‐ Vanishing Cambridgeshire."

The above paragraphs are taken from the introduction to Mike Petty's book with the same title as our forthcoming talk.

Mike Petty is the best-known authority on the history of Cambridgeshire and the Fens. For more than 30 years he has lectured to schools, adult classes, societies and conferences throughout the region. Mike has daily and weekly columns in the Cambridgeshire Evening News and Cambridgeshire Weekly News and has written several books on Cambridgeshire.

8 May 2019 (Wednesday) 7.30pm - How to build a cathedral with David Bruce

Change in our advertised speaker - sadly Jan Munt cannot give her presentation on Ely Cathedral - its History and Symbolism, but has kindly arranged for David Bruce to give his presentation on how to build a cathedral.

Should be a fascinating subject of how such tour de forces were constructed by master stonemasons and the physical technical challenges of building so high and lifting such massive pieces of stone, which of course back then they did not have access to today's technical hardware for aiding massive construction projects.

David is the Cellarer for Ely Cathedral (a cellarer is the person in charge of provisions for an Abbey or a Cathedral). David is also a historian and theologian.

Committee Meetings

Committee meetings are normally arranged on the first Monday of each month throughout the year, except January and May which are on the second Monday.

Summaries of the society's talks and accounts of its visits appear in our Annual Report. The contents of our most recent Annual Reports are listed here To obtain a copy please write or email our Secretary.