Evening talk by Nick Higham. How did people keep clean before baths and showers? Answer: they washed their underclothes. Doing the laundry was vital for personal hygiene, to ensure people didn't stink. But doing the laundry was also immensely hard work (almost always done by women) and used enormous quantities of a scarce resource: water.…
Guy Hall will be presenting an illustrated history of Brighton Engine Works and will explain the history of this once massive factory in Brighton, a walk around the works itself and the locomotives it produced, from the small early locos, to the most unusual steam locomotives ever produced, Bullied’s double ended Leader! Non-members welcome £1.00
A Saturday morning talk by John S Lee. This talk will examine the medieval cloth making industry in Yorkshire. It will explore the different processes involved in making cloth. Several of these terms are still mentioned in everyday speech, when we talk of being ‘dyed in the wool’ or ‘on tenterhooks’. It will also examine…
Evening talk by John Harrison Church bells were cast in Wokingham between the mid-1300s and the early 1600s. The foundry is long gone but some of the bells cast there are still in use. Bell founding methods used today can be traced back to the way medieval founders worked. Brick making thrived in Wokingham during…
