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.
Mourholme Local History Society
The History Society for the Old Parish of Warton offers a series of talks, Gaskell Hall, Silverdale LA5 0RA. Visitors £2 per session. Meetings are held on Wednesdays at 7:30pm.
Wednesday 25 February 2026 Carnforth Haematite Iron Works, with Phil Baggley. A study of iron and steel making in Carnforth between 1866 and 1930. Sixty five years of innovation, process development, boom and bust.
Wednesday 25 March Gandhi’s Northern Holiday, with Nick Burton. Mohandas Ghandhi spent a weekend ‘up North’ in September 1931, during which he visited Lancashire and the West Riding.
Wednesday 29 April The local finds of a metal detectorist, with Nigel Law. A presentation about Nigel’s finds in the local area, encompassing the modern age, the Georgians, medieval, early medieval including Saxon/Viking, the Romans and Celts.
For more information, please see the website www.mourholme.co.uk
Lancashire Place Names Survey AGM and Annual Lecture
The Lancashire Place Names Survey will be holding its AGM meeting on Thursday 5 March 2026 at 6.30 pm followed directly by the annual lecture, given this year by Dr Alan Crosby:
Place-Names, Landscape and Society in Medieval North-West England
Many place-names describe aspects and features of the landscape as it existed when they were coined. Historians can use these as a rich source of evidence about past land-use, economic activity, settlement and communications. This talk considers what place-names can tell us about the medieval landscape of Lancashire.
The meeting will be hosted on Zoom by the Friends of Lancashire Archives here:
Zoom talk by the Friends of Lancashire Archives: Lancashire Place Names Survey
Meeting ID: 869 9669 8372
Passcode: 145449
Everyone is welcome, and you can attend either or both. For more information, please visit the LPNS website here
Burnley Historical Society Talks
Wednesday 11 March Pockets of pacifism in East Lancashire: the Local Peace Campaign during the two World Wars, with Steven Illingworth
Wednesday 8 April Trials of the Lancashire Witches with Dr Graham Kemp
Meetings are held on Wednesdays at 2.00 pm at St John’s RC Church Hall,
Bracewell Street, Burnley BB10 1TB. Members free, guests £2.00
Women of Greater Manchester Network
Join the Women of Greater Manchester network for the 5th Annual Margaret Ashton lecture which celebrates the forgotten women of Greater Manchester's rich history.
On Saturday 14 March from 10.30am to 1.00pm Dr Michael Sanders, Janet Hughes and Dr Dan Edmonds, will bring to life the part that women played in the General Strike and their legacies in a free lecture event, Manchester Women and the General Strike: 100 Years On.
Venue: Mechanics Institute (Major Street Entrance) 103 Princess Street, Manchester, M1 6DD
Doors open at 10.00am for refreshments and there will be stalls from some community partners, plus a wonderful display of banners and craft work from the Trailblazers! stitching group.
Complementary teas and coffees will run throughout the morning.
Booking is preferred, but not essential.
For more information and to secure tickets, please visit Manchester Women and the General Strike: 100 Years On Tickets, Sat, Mar 14, 2026 at 10:00 AM | Eventbrite
Stonyhurst Museum Lecture Evening
Stonyhurst Museum and Historic Libraries will be open to the public for one special evening on St Patrick’s Day, Tuesday 17 March 2026.
Stonyhurst’s Irish links are numerous, surprising and historically significant. This exclusive evening event will explore some of the most compelling stories, people and objects that have connected Ireland to the College across centuries.
Beginning at 7pm, guests will enjoy an illustrated lecture from Stonyhurst’s Museum Curator, Dr Jan Graffius, followed by a private viewing of rare Irish artefacts in the Square Library. Highlights include unique early Irish manuscripts, vestments belonging to St Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, and a remarkable one-off display of 17th and 18th century Irish silver, generously lent by the Poleberry Foundation and shown alongside rare pieces from the Stonyhurst Collections.
The evening will also feature plays and poems written by Stonyhurst-educated Irish revolutionaries, including Thomas Francis Meagher and Joseph Mary Plunkett, before guests are invited to explore the Historic Libraries and Museum and enjoy Irish drinks and refreshments.
Tickets cost £35. For more information and to book please visit the Stonyhurst website
Lancaster History Lecture 2026
This year’s Lancaster History Lecture will take place on Wednesday 18 March, 6.30–8pm, in the Faraday Lecture Theatre. Professor Dan Hicks (University of Oxford) will be joining us for an engaging conversation inspired by his book Every Monument Will Fall. Together with Lancaster University's Professor Deborah Sutton (School of Global Affairs), Professor Hicks will explore how monuments, museums, and the objects we keep continue to shape public debate today.
Reserve a free ticket or watch online. The lecture is part of Litfest 2026, in collaboration with the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.
Records on Ancestry
Lancashire Roman Catholic and Methodist registers are now available on Ancestry.
Lancashire Archives have been working in partnership with Ancestry to make more of our church registers available online, recently launching a collection of Lancashire Roman Catholic records and Non-Conformist registers which contains high quality, colour images of many of registers. There are nearly 3,000,000 Roman Catholic church register entries and 450,000 Methodist church entries covering baptisms, marriages and burials. The collections are fully indexed so you can either search by name across the whole set of records or browse through the images of an individual register.
Ancestry can be accessed free of charge at Lancashire Archives and in any Lancashire library, or visit the Ancestry website
Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire online talk
One-place studies – their place in the historical landscape by Janet Barrie.
Janet Barrie, the chair of the Society for One-Place Studies, researches the people and activities associated with the Springhill area of Rossendale. In this talk, originally given in September 2024, she examines the principles of conducting a one-place study. Available now on the Society's website
Weaving History Podcasts
A brand new research podcast, Weaving History, has launched. It uncovers a forgotten piece of Lancashire’s working-class history and was created by two Lancaster University Alumni from the English and Creative Writing department. Combining Victorian poetry and interviews with leading experts, Weaving History tells the story of the Cotton Famine in a fresh and accessible way. It connects the cotton weaving industry in North-West England to the American Civil War, the fight against slavery and Victorian literature. All six episodes are available to stream, so Listen to Weaving History episodes
Lancashire Archives and Local History
Lancashire Archives and Local History now has a Facebook page.
You can also follow Lancashire Archives on X
Back issues of the Lancashire local history magazine 'Archives' are 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 for a feature, please contact archives@lancashire.gov.uk to discuss your suggestion.
Rookhow Open Days
Rookhow is a Historic Grade II* listed 1725 Quaker Meeting House in the heart of the Rusland Valley. Set in 12 wooded acres between Coniston and Lake Windermere, open days are held every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month.
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 of 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.
Bob Dobson, Heritage Books
Bob Dobson has been dealing in second-hand 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).
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.
British Association for Local History
The British Association for Local History feature, the Ten Minute Talk, has proved so popular that there are now many talks and presentations available on their website, on subjects as diverse as nineteenth-century small businesses, marriage in early-modern Suffolk, construction of a Cambridge gas holder or the ‘Spanish’ influenza epidemic of 1918-19. 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.
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. It includes the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which has parish records for several countries including Australia, Canada and the United States of America, 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 and 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.
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.
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, 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 and 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.
If you would like to submit an article for this page or our newsletter, please contact us: rhc@lancaster.ac.uk 01524 593770.