External Events and Announcements

As you will appreciate, many external events may change their details at short notice. We therefore ask you to contact organisations directly for up to date information about whether their events are going ahead as advertised. Please note that the RHC cannot provide further information on these events and announcements, nor be held responsible for any inaccuracies in what is posted below.

Kendal Historical and Archaeological Society

Upcoming talks from the programme for 2023 as follows:

Monday 25 September 2023 Ivan Day The Vegetarian Viscount

John Lowther, 1st Viscount Lonsdale (1655-1700), was a dedicated vegetarian, an unusual lifestyle for an English aristocrat of the time. A recently unearthed recipe book of the 1690s from the Lowther Archives gives an interesting insight into dining in this extraordinary household.

Monday 23 October 2023 David Evans The Westmorland Dales – a landscape history

Over the last five years the Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership Scheme has been working to reveal some of the hidden heritage of this area to the north of the Howgills.

Monday 27 November 2023 Rob Collins The Phallus and the Frontier: The form and function of phallic stone imagery along Hadrian’s Wall

The phallus is a ubiquitous symbol across the ancient world, symbolic of both erotic and apotropaic powers. Here we shall examine the stone carvings of phalli to understand better what they can reveal about the Wall in the Roman period.

Meetings are held at 7.30pm in The Castle Street Community Centre Castle Street, Kendal LA9 7AD Annual subscriptions of £10 run from 1st October 2023 Visitors are welcome to meetings, £3 for each lecture

For more information, please visit the website here

Morecambe Bay Partnership Online Talks

The Sunset Series - Morecambe Bay Pertnership's series of online talks - is back again this autumn.

On Tuesday 26 September from 19:00-20:00 Dr Bill Shannon - The Last Wolf: a Story of England in the Fourteenth Century

Exploring the tale of England’s last wolf, said to have been killed on Humphrey Head, Dr. Shannon will follow the hunt through the Cartmel Peninsula and time - and try to disentangle fact from fantasy.

Tickets are £3. Book your ticket for the online lecture here

On Tuesday 31 October from 19:00-20:00 It's All About the Bay with Nigel Thompson

Journalist Nigel Thompson created The Morecambe Bay Podcast during lockdown with the idea of publishing half a dozen stories. Now, more than 100 editions later, they're proving popular far beyond the Bay.
From nature to culture; photography to art, the series has featured a wide range of guests, all of whom – like Nigel – have a passion for Morecambe Bay.

Tickets are £3. Book your ticket here

On Tuesday 28 November from 19:00-20:00 The Beauty of a Landscape with Gemma Wren

The natural landscape around Morecambe Bay is varied and unique but what makes it stand out as special? Form, situation, how it has been shaped by humans, what sits within that landscape…Gemma will explore the various elements of the Morecambe Bay landscape, sharing her views on why its beauty beats some of our more iconic landscapes.

Gemma Wren runs NaturesGems offering guided walks that share the hidden natural wonders of Morecambe Bay

Tickets are £3. Book Gemma Wren lecture here

Hoghton Tower Opera Dinner

On Saturday 30 September, Sir Bernard and Lady De Hoghton and the Trustees of Hoghton Tower Preservation Trust invite you to experience “Vissi d’arte vissi d’amore”, an Opera Dinner held in the magnificent Banqueting Hall.

This is a fundraising event for Hoghton Tower Preservation Trust. By attending this special event you are supporting the Trust to achieve its charitable objectives, to restore and preserve this unique piece of Lancashire’s history, and to share this historic gem with visitors for generations to come.

Arrival for pre-dinner drinks from 6:30pm. Seating for dinner is at 7:30pm.

For more information and to book tickets, please visit the Hoghton Tower website

Lancashire Archives

On Saturday 7 October, Lancashire Archives is holding free family activities from 10.00am to 4.00pm. As part of Lancashire County Council's Fun Palaces initiative, there will be free Chinese calligraphy, tea tasting, Tai Chi and Qigong, ukele sessions, drama and printing workshops and much more. Refreshments will be available to buy in the Friends of Lancashire Archive's Cafe Archive and there is a Pay and Display parking lot on site.

Venue: Lancashire Archives, Bow Lane Preston PR1 2RE

For more information, please email archives@lancashire.gov.uk

Kirkby Lonsdale District & Civic Society

Kirkby Lonsdale & District Civic Society announces a series of Autumn Talks for 2023

Talks will be given every second Monday of the month at the Lunesdale Hall, Kirkby Lonsdale LA6 2BG

On Monday 9 October Roger Baker will speak on All Mod Cons? A look at Country House Technology

Monday 13 November Sue Allan: Echoes of Old Cumbria: The folk music, dance and song of the Lake Counties

Monday 11 December Mike Winstanley: Delinquents and Debtors: Life in Lancaster Castle in the 19th century

Admission for all lectures is £2.50, including refreshments.

For more information please contactNicholas Flight, Secretary KLDCS on telephone 07548 919445

Lancashire Archaeological and Historical Society

Lancaster Archaeological and Historical Society

Lecture Programme 2023

Last Thursday in the month. 7.30pm start for 7.45pm.

Venue: St Paul’s Parish Hall, Scotforth Road (A6), Lancaster, LA1 4TS (directly opposite church). Parking is on main and local roads. Disabled parking and access at front of Hall. Visitors welcome £4.00 per lecture.

Thursday 28 September Dr Nick Radburn (Lecturer in History, Lancaster University) The gunpowder industry and the Slave Trade

Thursday 26 October Anna Watson (retired Lancashire archivist), Recusancy, fornication and misbehaving clergy – evidence from Ecclesiastical Court Records

Thursday 30 November Dr Bill Shannon FSA (independent scholar and trustee of Morecambe Bay Partnership) Coastal salt-making from the Solway to the Mersey in the medieval and early modern periods

For more information, please visit the website here or contact membership secretary Don Walker dnw281@gmail.com

Join in the Eden Project Community Conversation 2023

The most recent in a series of open community conversations about the project was held on 30 June.

The online meetings listed below continue the series that took place before the project was awarded £50m from the UK Government’s Levelling Up Fund. Following the news of the successful bid, these events provide an opportunity to hear the latest Eden Project Morecambe plans and updates from the senior team behind the project.

The Eden team are keen to hear from the community as to what their vision is for Morecambe over the next few years, and there will be a chance for attendees to ask questions too.

Further 2023 conversations will take place on

• Friday 29 September, 1pm
• Friday 8 December 8, 1pm

Recordings will be made available afterwards for anyone who can’t attend live.

The conversations will be conducted through Zoom. They are open to anyone and are free to attend.

You can sign up to attend at Eden Project, Morecambe where recordings of all previous discussions can also be found.

The Lord of Bowland's 12th Annual Lecture

Date: Tuesday 3 October 2023, 7.30pm – 9.00pm

Venue: Tithe Barn, Browsholme Hall, Cow Ark, Clitheroe

This year's lecture will be delivered by Dr Rick Peterson, Reader in Archaeology, University of Central Lancashire.

Since 2011, the University of Central Lancashire has been excavating newly discovered prehistoric sites around New Laund Hill in Whitewell. With the final season of excavation completed in 2021, we are now starting to see how this landscape was used from the Late Mesolithic (around 7000 years ago) until the Middle Iron Age (around 2500 years ago).

This lecture will review the results from the project and include recent work, such as the discovery of a whole new Middle Iron Age settlement site and a much more detailed understanding of the worked stone tool evidence from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods.

Entry is free but pre-booking is essential and under 18s must be accompanied by an adult.

Donations are welcomed in support of local charities Slaidburn Archive and Champion Bowland. To book a place please email sandra.silk@lancashire.gov.uk or phone 07973 923142.

UCLan History Team Day School

The UCLan History Team, in collaboration with Lancashire Archives and the Harris Museum, are holding a day conference celebrating the digitisation of the Harkness Collection on Saturday 21 October.

John Harkness was arguably the most significant printer of broadsides and ballads in Victorian Britain. From his base in Preston, his work reached audiences worldwide. Now, for the first time, the collection of his work compiled in Preston will be digitally accessible to the public.

This study day will delve into the significance of broadsides and ballads in history and explore how historians can utilize them in their research. Additionally, we will discuss the life and work of John Harkness. As part of the event, attendees will have the opportunity to view some of the original Harkness materials and tour the archives. Light refreshments will be available and we encourage donations to the Friends of the Lancashire Archives.

Speakers include: Gregg Butler and Tom Walsh (The Old Lamb and Flag & Strawhead), Dr Alan Crosby and Professor Brian Maidment

Booking is required as places are very limited. Attendance is free although we encourage donations to the Friends of the Lancashire Archives.

Limited parking is available at the Archives – alternative parking can be found on Arthur Street weekend car parks.

For further information, contact Dr Jack Southern: jsouthern2@uclan.ac.uk

Lancashire Local History Federation

The LLHF is holding an event to celebrate its 50th anniversary at Lancashire Archives, Preston on Friday 27 October. It will begin at 5 pm with a talk from one of our longest standing members, Dr Paul Booth, on A tale of two places: Liverpool and Toxteth Park.

There will be a buffet followed by a tour of the archives finishing around 8 pm. There will also be a chance to see a new exhibition on display at the archives:

Shaping the future: Lancashire women’s lives 1950-1980.

This anniversary event is free to all LLHF members but as numbers are limited it is essential to book a place by contacting Zoë Lawson at elizoelaw@gmail.com.

Lancashire Archives and Local History

We're delighted to let you know that Lancashire Archives and Local History now has a Facebook page!

You can also follow Lancashire Archives on X (formerly Twitter)

Also, the second edition of our new Lancashire local history magazine 'Archives' is now available to purchase in all Lancashire County Council libraries and at Lancashire Archives, priced at £3. If you'd like to receive a copy by post, please contact the Archives at archives@lancashire.gov.uk.

If you have an idea you’d like to discuss, please contact archives@lancashire.gov.uk to discuss your suggestion. You can find out more about how to submit an article by visiting the archives and record's order a copy website.

Morecambe Heritage Centre Exhibition

A new exhibition, 'Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside - Memories of Boarding Houses and Morecambe Landladies', is now on view. Featuring video interviews with landladies, their families and their guests, it explores the phenomenon of boarding houses and private hotels and looks at some of the high points and challenges of running a busy boarding house.

Venue: Morecambe Heritage Centre, Unit 29 Royalty Mall, Arndale Centre Morecambe LA4 5DH

For more information, please visit Morecambe Heritage or telephone 01524 931461

Filmed Production of 400 Year Old Play By Shakespeare's Contemporary Lady Mary Wroth

A 400-year-old play, which captures how the delights and difficulties of courtship have changed (or not), is now freely available on film thanks to Professor Alison Findlay, Professor of Renaissance Drama in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Lancaster University and Chair of the British Shakespeare Association.

‘Love’s Victory’, by Shakespeare’s contemporary Lady Mary Wroth, was written c.1617-1619 and is the earliest surviving romantic comedy by an Englishwoman.

The performance is the result of nearly 30 years’ work by Professor Alison Findlay. Her research project, ‘Shakespeare and His Sisters’ was set up to explore the works of Shakespeare and his female contemporary dramatists in site specific locations. The 2022 production, directed by Emma Rucastle and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Lancaster University, was designed to recreate the conditions of an early household performance. It was staged at the author’s home, Penshurst Place in Kent, in 2022.

Watch Love's Victory for free

Bob Dobson, Heritage Books

Bob Dobson has been dealing in secondhand Lancashire interest books for over 50 years and due to retirement is selling stock at half the catalogued price. From Lancashire Acts of Parliament to dialect poetry and old picture postcards, there is much to interest the local and family historian. To receive a catalogue, please email Bob at landypublishing@yahoo.co.uk. He can also be contacted on 01253 886103 or 0774 9838 444(text preferred).

City Museum Lancaster

Lancaster's City Museum has launched a free podcast series to celebrate their centenary. "100 Years, 100 Objects" explores the collections to shed light on the history of the city through well-known highlights and idden gems. Each week, two 10-minute podcasts will be broadcast covering a broad range of objects and their stories throughout the anniversary year of 2023.

You can also access the podcasts on Amazon Music or Spotify if you prefer.

The Leyland Historical Society

Meetings have resumed in the Shield Room, Banqueting Suite, South Ribble Civic Centre, West Paddock, Leyland, PR25 1DH. £5 for visitors (but new members are always welcome). Visit The Leyland Historical Society to find out more.

The Lancashire Local List Project

Lancashire residents are being asked to participate in a new project funded by the Government (MHCLG) and supported by Historic England. The project encourages communities to identify the local heritage which they value most for recognition and inclusion on a Local Heritage List.

Local Heritage Assets can include any local buildings, structures, sites and landscapes that have historic or heritage merit and contribute to the character of their area. There are many heritage assets across the UK which are not on the national designated lists i.e. Listed Buildings but remain important at a local level – because they contribute to the character of an area, have local historic associations, are local landmarks or are important to the local community. These could include an interesting local building or property, a cherished local memorial, village hall, mill building or simply an interesting historic feature like a village pump or a local park. Lancashire is a County that is diverse and rich in heritage and through this project we want to identify what characterises Lancashire and makes it a unique place to live, work and visit.

The central aim of the Lancashire Local List Project is to better recognise locally important heritage assets throughout the County. To do this we want to encourage everyone to be involved and sign up to the project. We need local residents, communities, groups and societies throughout Lancashire to go out this autumn and identify local heritage and to nominate those candidate buildings and sites through our dedicated new website. Additionally, you will be able to contribute to assets already on the Local List or listed by other people, by adding your own local knowledge, this can include photographs, documents etc. relating to that particular asset. The website also provides information about the project and guidance on how to contribute. Buildings or sites nominated through the project will be considered under selection criteria developed from Historic England guidance. The year-long project is being co-ordinated by Growth Lancashire on behalf of the Lancashire Authorities.

For further information on how to register and be a part of the project, please visit our website Lancashire Local Heritage List

British Association for Local History

The British Association for Local History has a new feature, the Ten Minute Talk, which has proved so popular that there are now ten talks and presentations available on their website, on subjects as diverse as nineteenth-century small businesses, marriage in early-modern Suffolk and construction of a Cambridge gas holder.

In the latest instalment, Dr Andrew Jackson examines a very topical subject, the ‘Spanish’ influenza epidemic of 1918-19, so please do take a look

Local and Family History Resources

Zoe Lawson of the Lancashire Local History Federation has kindly gathered a list of helpful resources. The following is a selection of free websites.

National Archives

Genealogy Sites

Ancestry and Find my past are well known and offer a 14-day free trial.

Family search is the largest site to offer free access to records from old censuses, birth registers, etc. It includes the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which has parish records for several countries including Australia, Canada and the USA, as well as the UK.

Genuki doesn’t hold records but contains a vast amount of historical information that will help you find the records you need from anywhere in the UK.

Jewish genealogy website.

Births, Marriages & Deaths. The Register Offices in the county of Lancashire hold the original records of births, marriages and deaths back to the start of civil registration in 1837. The county's family history societies are collaborating with the local registration services to make the indexes to these records freely searchable at Lancashire BMD.

Free access to records of births, marriages and deaths for the whole of the UK is available at Free BMD, Note that not all records have yet been transcribed.

Archived catalogues are always a good starting point and many online catalogue entries provide significant detail, though not a substitute for looking at the original document when archives offices re-open.

• Lancashire Archives
• Manchester City Archives

Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire

The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire seeks to promote understanding of, and public interest in, Lancashire and Cheshire’s past, through the publication of editions of historical documents. For an annual subscription of £20, members receive each year a hardback volume and an invitation to a historical lecture. For more information, including details of forthcoming publications, please visit http://rslc.org.uk/

Women In Street Names

Women in Street Names is a project to highlight streets named after women, for the British Federation of Women Graduates, and Harper Adams University. It was launched at the Women’s Library at the LSE in July 2019. Carrie de Silva from Harper Adams explains that the aim of the project is “to highlight streets named after women, (and to highlight how few there are!), and to remember such women as are commemorated. Outputs will be a booklet of mini-biographies of women named and a paper to consider political and social culturalisation, conscious and unconscious, through the names we see in our streets”. Information is requested from across the UK, and from villages, towns and cities. More obscure royalty will be of interest (the collection won’t be including Queen Victoria or Queen Elizabeth II). Obscure or less well-known saints are also welcome. Of particular interest will be little-known local women who nevertheless made a large contribution to their area. Carrie will welcome the name on its own, even if the sender knows nothing else about the named woman. Please forward the street name with district, town, city, village, etc. with the woman’s main achievement or area of operation (if you know it) to: Carrie de Silva: cdesilva@harper-adams.ac.uk. (07583 144622.)

Cumbria Prehistory Resource

Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society (CWAAS) have produced a learning resource to help teachers in the county’s schools support the teaching of prehistory, from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, within the History curriculum. The pack was produced with input from archaeological experts and feedback from teachers and learners after a pilot session in a Maryport school. It comprises an introductory slide show; in-school activities (covering topics like artefacts, burials, food and the home); on-site activity suggestions (using Cumbrian sites, artefacts and museums); background information and signposts to further information.

The resource pack is free and can be downloaded from the Cumbria Past website.

Or search Cumbria Past in Google, then open the tab Grants, and look under Schools Area

Global Link

Global Link has launched an exciting new online community heritage 'map' of Europe where viewers can discover previously undocumented histories of activities relating to peace and internationalism during the inter-war years of the twentieth century. Global Link has worked with volunteers to uncover local and regional histories of people who fought, and sometimes died, for social justice, human rights and peace. Now with EU funding from Erasmus +, this learning is being shared and developed with European partners through the project Learning from the Past (so that we are not condemned to repeat it) where partners have developed the online 'map' to document stories from across the continent. Viewers can click on areas within countries to find histories relating to that place. These include stories of people resisting fascism, colonialism and other underground resistance movements, stories of Scouting and Girl Guide movements across Europe, stories of the development of League of Nations groups, peace and internationalist activities in and out of schools, activism within international women's movements, and stories of migration. Visit Learning from the past website.

The Viking Age in the North West

The Viking Age in the North West is a free app which allows you to discover a range of sites in the Wirral that shed light on the history of Viking settlement and integration. These sites range from place names and archaeological finds to stone sculptures. The app comes with a map to help you locate sites, or you can browse through the alphabetical list. There is a brief description and image for every featured site, as well as references to find out more information. It is hoped to expand the geographical range of the app in future, and feedback via the app is welcome. You can download the app for free from Google Play or the App Store.

If you would like to submit an article for this page or our newsletter, please contact us: rhc@lancaster.ac.uk 01524 593770