Lectures and Outings

Old Bolingbroke Castle, church and village

Guided tour of the Castle site led by Dave Start.  In the early thirteenth century, Ralph, Earl of Chester, built three great castles to administer his huge estates: they were Beeston, Bolingbroke and Chartley.  Bolingbroke, built in 1220s, was the quintessence of modern castle design – never actually built for defence, but as the ultimate statement of power and prestige. The castle passed through the Earls of Chester and Lincoln to become a Lancastrian stronghold and the birthplace of Henry IV. Bolingbroke was slighted after the English Civil War and almost disappeared from view - but its ruins were excavated by English Heritage in the 1960s and it is now one of Lincolnshire’s little-known heritage treasures.

Refreshment break of tea and biscuits at the Black Horse.

Guided tour of St Peter & Paul church with village historian Steve Lumb.  Walk around the village with Dave, Steve & Jean Howard.

Total Cost: per person £7.50 including refreshments.

Booking is essential, no later than 8 July.  For a booking form contact Nigel Christmas on linden73@sky.com

Spanish Influenza as Seen through Local Press Reports

This lecture will be held in the Methodist Church

Andrew is a Historian and Geographer and is the Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange at BGU.   His current research interests include twentieth-century urban and rural change, and local and regional history. He also engages in consultancy and project work relating to public history and heritage. Andrew joined the staff of Bishop Grosseteste University in 2007, following ten years at the University of Exeter in the Department for Lifelong Learning.

The 1918-19 ‘Spanish Flu’ epidemic and the present Covid-19 pandemic show many similarities. This talk will consider the timeline of the 1918-19 event, the causes, the response of the public and the authorities, and the longer-term legacy. The main historical source referred to will be the pages of the Lincolnshire Echo.

The Revesby Land Agent

This lecture will be held in the Methodist Church.

Robert is the sixth generation of his family to be a Land Agent, and this is the story of his great great grandfather.

George Bell was appointed Land Agent in 1842 when James Banks Stanhope inherited the Revesby Estate. Over the next thirty years with generous financial input from his patron he organised the rebuilding of most farmhouses and cottages, the almshouses and the church, underdraining, planting new woodland, as well as the construction of a new country house, school and parsonage.  The narrative links Sir Joseph Banks, Scone Palace, The Bowes Museum, a burglary at Revesby and many other anecdotes.

Managing Lincolnshire’s Archaeological Heritage

This lecture will be held in the Methodist Church.

Ian has been Historic Places Manager for LCC since 2017. He first came to the county to work for LCC in 1990 and has been the city of Lincoln Archaeology Officer too. For 18 years he was an Inspector of Ancient Monuments for English Heritage, now Historic England. During his time with HE he had a number of national roles and was Inspector for four counties of the West Midlands. He has worked in Italy, Peru and has an interest in historic preservation in the USA. Although his background is in prehistory his work has taken him in all sorts of fascinating directions.  He is currently chairman of the SLHA and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 2019.

The talk will look at the archaeological heritage of Lincolnshire in all its forms and how it is managed to secure a future for our past.   This involves working with a number of partners to ensure the best possible outcomes for the county’s wealth of heritage. This means ensuring threatened heritage is recorded where harm cannot be avoided. It also means ensuring the people of the county get to hear some of the stories our ancestors have left behind.

Farming and Conservation: the Last Hundred Years

This lecture will be held in the Methodist Church.

Henry and John are two generations of a family who have farmed the Lincolnshire Wolds since 1946 when the Smiths moved from Staffordshire.   They produce wheat, barley, oats, oil-seed rape, sugar beet, peas, beans and maize and raise beef cattle and ducks.

Farming has been subject to varying demands of government, needs of the nation and the expectations of the public.  Handling these is a delicate exercise but the family has won conservation awards, maintains a museum of farming and erected a memorial to airmen lost over the Withcall farm.  In their centenary year they share with us a century of their endeavours and achievements.

The Lincolnshire Wolds in the Roman Era

This lecture will be held online, via Zoom.

Dr Steven Willis is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Kent.    He obtained his MA and PhD from Durham University and subsequently became Senior Research Fellow in their Department of Archaeology.   He is former President of the Study Group for Roman Pottery, and now edits the group’s journal.  In addition to a specialization in Roman ceramics, his main areas of expertise are the archaeology of settlement, society and material culture in the Iron Age and Roman era in western Europe. He has been based at the University of Kent since 2004.

Over 20 years ago Dr Willis chose the Lincolnshire Wolds as an area for study because it had been so under-researched.  Tonight he will talk about his many discoveries of Roman Lincolnshire including the probable shrine at Nettleton/Rothwell, which yielded a curse tablet; the rural farm complex at Hatcliffe Top; an elaborate villa site at Brookenby, where a previously unrecognized large rural complex has recently been explored; and a site near Walesby where tufa, a favoured building material of the Romans, had been sought out and quarried, adding to the growing evidence for the exploitation of local stone types. Overall, a picture of a sophisticated and diverse regional economy has emerged, together with some exciting finds.

The Battle of Winceby

This lecture will be held online, via Zoom.

Jonathan is a lecturer in Early Modern History in the School of History and Heritage at Lincoln University.  His area of expertise is the political, constitutional and intellectual history of seventeenth-century Britain. Besides writing a biography of Oliver Cromwell (Cromwell’s Head, 2008), he has also published widely on visual culture, public ceremony, law and political theory during the period of the British Civil Wars and their aftermath. More recently he has published a book examining the nature of the House of Lords during the mid-seventeenth century and the contested meanings of kingship in 1650s Britain. He is a Trustee of the Cromwell Association

The Battle of Winceby took place on 11 October 1643.  The Royalist forces under the command of Sir William Widdrington were defeated by the Parliamentary cavalry, but not before Cromwell’s horse was shot from under him by Sir Ingram Hopton.  Cromwell found another mount but Hopton was killed in the battle and was buried in St Mary’s church, Horncastle.  Though a largely overlooked minor battle in the English Civil War, this brief exchange rapidly led to the Parliamentary control of Lincolnshire.

Charters, Letters and Afternoon Tea: the Academic and Social History of The Lincoln Record Society

This lecture will be held online, via Zoom.

Nicholas Bennett was an Archivist in North Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire before moving to Lincoln in 1979. After eleven years working in the Lincolnshire Archives Office, he was appointed Vice-Chancellor and Librarian of Lincoln Cathedral, where he remained until his retirement in 2013. He has been an officer of the Lincoln Record Society for (almost) forty years and wrote the Society’s Centenary History, Wonderful to Behold (2010).

Local record societies, financed almost entirely from the subscriptions of their members, have made an important contribution to the study of English history by making accessible in printed form some of the key archival material relating to their areas. The Lincoln Record Society, founded in 1910 by a local clergyman, Charles Wilmer Foster, set new standards of meticulous scholarship in the editing of its volumes, from medieval charters to eighteenth-century letters and twentieth-century diaries. Its growing reputation can be traced through the contributions made by such distinguished historians as Alexander Hamilton Thompson, Frank Stenton, Kathleen Major and Dorothy Owen. The Society has continued to publish volumes through two World Wars, economic crises and a technological revolution. But its work is made possible only through the loyalty of its members, cherishing the volumes, meeting up at lectures and book launches and enjoying those lavish teas for which the Society is celebrated.

Corpus Christi Guilds

This lecture will be held online, via Zoom.

Dr Claire Kennan is a Medieval Historian specialising in the social and cultural history of Britain between c. 1300 and c. 1500. Claire completed here PhD in 2018 and is currently working on a proposal for her first book; she is the co-editor of the Brepols series Reinterpreting the Middle Ages: From Medieval to Neo. Claire has taught Medieval History at King’s College London and Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2019 she was one of the AHRC’s Creative Economy Engagement Fellows at The National Archives (London) and between 2017 and 2020 she was the Medieval Specialist on the £1 million National Lottery Heritage funded Citizens Project. Claire is currently a History Lecturer and Research Coordinator at the Bader International Study Centre, the UK campus for Queen’s University (Canada).

The 1388-9 guild enquiry ordered by Richard II’s government constitutes the first substantial body of evidence for the existence of parish guilds in England. While the evidence generated by the enquiry is geographically uneven and incomplete, it offers a unique window into guild activity at the end of the fourteenth century. One of the newer saints’ cults which was significantly represented in 1389 was that of Corpus Christi, the feast of which had only been established some sixty years before. Miri Rubin has noted that out of the 507 surviving guild returns, forty-four guilds were dedicated to Corpus Christi, eighteen of which came from Lincolnshire. Therefore, over forty per cent of England’s Corpus Christi guilds, according to the enquiry evidence, were based in Lincolnshire, compared with a national average of approximately eight per cent. This lecture will focus on the prevalence of Corpus Christi guilds in the county, examining their foundation, location and, where possible, membership and office holders, along with their continental connections and influence in their localities. It will also draw some conclusions as to why Lincolnshire had so many Corpus Christi guilds and what this can tell us about patterns of popular piety in the county at the end of the fourteenth century.

Fine and Private Places or Why Study Funerary Monuments?

This lecture will be held online, via Zoom.

Jean Wilson MBE FSA was educated at Cambridge and taught at universities in the UK and the USA.  She has published widely on Elizabethan Court culture, renaissance playhouses and funerary monuments, with a particular interest in the depiction of emotion. From 2013-18 she was President of the Church Monuments Society and in 2019 was awarded an MBE for services to heritage.

Funerary monuments are often overlooked by visitors to churches, or even regarded as a nuisance. But they are of enormous interest, both as representing the bulk of surviving pre-twentieth century British sculpture, and as a resource for historians. They provide information about how our ancestors looked, how they felt, and how they saw themselves.

A History of Myers Bakery and Their Traditional Products

This lecture will be held in the Methodist Church.

Michael Myers is the fourth generation of a Derbyshire family who moved first to Alford in 1901 to run a six-sailed mill and shop.  Myers Bakery has provided an important part of Horncastle’s trade since 1969.  Nowadays it is a significant element in the town’s attraction for shoppers, not only for delicious bread and cakes but also because they have expanded to run a delicatessen and cafe.  Their plumbread is widely stocked in shops in Louth and further afield.

The talk will include the Lincolnshire history of the firm, and samples of the recipes that have remained a secret will be available to taste.