Our speaker Dr Julia Elton, an engineering historian and honorary member of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers. John Smeaton is widely regarded as the founder of the British civil engineering profession. His career included pioneering work on lighthouses (most notably the third Eddystone lighthouse), canals, harbours and bridges.   There is no charge to…

Speaker: Nicholas Weedon

Part 1: Before World War 1 Colin Bird will give us the first of his talks about how the railways impacted the Bracknell Forest area. Non-members are welcome for a small fee of £3 to cover hot drink and biscuits.

Dr John Tanner asks how England will choose to remember its coal mining heritage. Once the demand for domestic coal started to fall in the 1950s the number of pits declined sharply. Nevertheless, at the start of the 1980s the National Coal Board still employed some 250,000 workers, but the UK has now moved away…

The SIAS Annual General Meeting, which is usually very brief, followed by a light-hearted test of your knowledge of industrial archaeology.   There is no charge to SIAS members, guests are welcome at £3. At Silver Street there is also a free-of-charge Book Exchange and SIAS publications are on sale at reduced price for members.

Why South London's canals failed Speaker: Alan Burkitt-Gray

For 75 years, AWE has proudly played a role of critical national importance: helping deliver the UK’s nuclear deterrent. In 1950, Aldermaston became the site of the UK Government’s Atomic Weapons Programme, initially named ‘High Explosive Research’, under the supervision of British Manhattan Project veteran William Penney. It was originally designated as the Atomic Weapons…

Dartmouth, Devon, was a significant coal bunkering port for steamships from the late 19th century, employing large numbers of tough, competitive workers called coal lumpers who manually loaded coal from barges/hulks into ships' bunkers, a dangerous but well-paid job until mechanization and changing ship types led to its decline around the First World War. For details about how to…

Talk by Keith Hillman. Keith has an extensive collection of tools and artefacts, and will display and describe some of these for us. All welcome.

Speaker Colin White has identified the locations and condition of around twenty-five World War II covert listening stations (known as "Y-Stations") in the West Country, many along the strategically important coastlines of the English and Bristol Channels. They collected vast quantities of encrypted enemy radio messages, which were the raw material for the codebreakers at Bletchley Park…