NEWSLETTER 13th March 2018
REMINDER : our AGM and supper is on Friday March 16th (NOT the 17th as in the Programme Card), and tickets (£12.50) for the supper are still available from Isobel Gill (01926 640426) or Ilona Sekacz (01295 670675) up to Thursday 15th March. Please note that the (short) AGM business starts at 7.00pm. The business and supper will be followed by a re-run of the Ilona’s short Snapshot presentation compiled 10 years ago, and then a light-hearted picture quiz about the village scenes captured during the Snapshot project.
If you, or any of your friends, would like to nominate yourselves, or them (with their permission!) for the committee, please let a member of the present committee know so that their nomination can be put to the AGM. Nominations will also be accepted at the AGM.
Report on Anne Langley’s talk Friday 16th February “A Trip Down the River Avon in 1900 Re-visited”
Anne’s illustrated talk was based on a box of glass lantern slides stored in the archives of Rugby library, dating to the early years of the 20th century. They were dated and had been used by Reverend E N Dew, a Stratford chaplain, presumably to illustrate talks he gave on a trip he undertook from the source of the Avon near Naseby to its confluence with the Severn. The slides in the box only went downstream as far as Warwick, so there is, or was, another lost collection of slides as Part 2 of the the Rev Dew’s talk.
Anne showed the progress of the 1900 trip compared with modern views of the same scenes. This had required considerable fieldwork on her part, tracking down altered or lost buildings. Sometimes the slide image had been reversed in the copying process, making identification doubly difficult. The Rev Dew had recorded many mills, none now operating but some of the mill buildings still survive. It’s a pity the series of slides did not continue as far as Hampton Lucy where there is still a working mill, which the Group visited a few years back. Some building remained but were nuch altered, such as the so-called “Guy Fawkes House” in Dunchurch, where the 1900s cement render has been removed to reveal the timber frame beneath.
Anne had unearthed some contemporary accounts of events in the places recorded along the river, including a case of poisoning by mouldy grain at Clifton on Dunsmore, and an Elizabethan ghost at Holbroke Grange.
Rachel Mander led our vote of thanks for an illuminating evening
Hampton Lucy Mill, K&DLHG visit 2008
Other Local History Society events.
Warwickshire Local History Society: 20th February. “Old Pubs and Lost Hostelries of Warwickshire” by Richard Churchley at the Friends Meeting House, High Street Warwick 7.30
Lighthorne History Society: Friday 9th March “Little Known Warwickshire part 2” by Alan Winterburn Lighthorne Village hall 7.30
Leamington History Group: 26th February “Jane Austen and Stoneleigh Abbey” by Sheila Woolf at the Dormer Centre, Leamington Spa, 7.30.
Committee Matters.
The 1st meeting of the new Committee is Monday 9th April 2018.
DF 13 03 18