Talks
Programme 2024-2025
All talks
start at 2:30 pm.
Entry to the
talks is free for members (a donation
towards the costs would be appreciated).
Non members are
most welcome to attend any talk, there
is a charge of £3 for each visitor.
2024
Date: September 27th 2024
Subject: The
Geological Evolution and Landscape
of the Farnham area
Presenter:
Professor
Dan Bosence
Location: The Garden Gallery
This talk,
given by Professor Dan
Bosence, Emeritus Professor Earth
Sciences, Royal Holloway, University
of London, will explore the origin
of the sand, clay and chalk that
form the landscape around Farnham.
The sands forming the heathlands,
the clays the pastures and oak
woodlands to the west and the chalk
the Hog’s Back and Farnham Park
ridges.
Professor Bosence will
detail when these deposits were laid
down, later deformed to create the
Hog’s Back and subsequently eroded
into hills and valleys to form our
present day landscape.
Date: October
18th 2024
Subject: Three
Around Farnham after fifty years
Presenter:
Raymond
Williams
Location: The Garden Gallery
Raymond Williams’s “Three Around
Farnham” after fifty years: Looking
again at a Writers’ Landscape’
In his classic 1973 study The
Country and the City, Raymond
Williams included a memorable
chapter with the title ‘Three Around
Farnham’. It was a snapshot of a
landscape (“round a thirty-mile
triangle of roads… on the borders of
Hampshire and Surrey”) at a time of
revolution – the early decades of
the nineteenth century.
The three
writers in the frame were the
journalist and campaigner William
Cobbett, the novelist Jane Austen,
and the naturalist Gilbert White.
Williams wanted to show how at a
moment of historical transformation
the same landscape could be looked
at in three absolutely different
ways: as a backdrop for social
change, as a location of profound
settlement, and as a purely natural
environment, abstractable from human
activity.
In this talk Dr Paddy
Bullard, Associate Professor of
English and Book History, University
of Reading, will reconsider the
value of Williams’s analysis after
fifty years. Is it possible now to
think about the area around Farnham
with a spirit of landscape
synthesis, rather than division?
Date: November 15th 2024
Subject:
Sun Lane Bronze Age and Saxon
Cemetery, Alresford
Presenter: Robert
McCulloch
Location:
The Garden Gallery
Sun Lane Bronze Age and Saxon
Cemetery, Alresford Digging for
Britain, the BBC’s archaeology show
recently featured an excavation at
Alresford that has uncovered Bronze
Age and Saxon treasure
The excavation, on Tichborne Down,
has revealed the remains of a Bronze
Age (2300 BC – 800 BC) barrow
cemetery and one of the largest
Anglo-Saxon cemeteries found in
Hampshire, with more than 120 graves
identified dating back to the 7th
century AD. Among the discoveries is
a poorly preserved skeleton of a
young woman buried with a rare gold
disc pendant, adorned with intricate
gold filigree forming a cross shape.
Many of the other graves included
small iron knives, while one was
buried with a sword.
Archaeologist Robert McCulloch of
Pre-Construct Archaeology will talk
about these important discoveries.
Date: December
13th 2024
Subject:
The Tidal Thames – its Folklore and
Traditions
Presenter:
Mark Lewis
Location:
The Garden Gallery
Mark Lewis is a freelance artist,
designer-silversmith and retired
university lecturer. He also has a
passion for lighthouses and is a
keen folklorist with an interest in
unusual local customs and rituals.
In 2013 he published a book on the
folklore and popular customs of the
church.
His talk will explore the rich
tradition of lore and legend in the
tidal reaches of London’s River,
including pagan gods, riverside
taverns, ghosts, ceremonials, frost
fairs, tales of smuggling and
pirates.
2025
Date: January
2025
Subject:
Presenter:
Location:
The Garden Gallery
Date: February
2025
Subject:
Presenter:
Location:
The Garden Gallery
Date: March 2025
Subject:
Presenter:
Location:
The Garden Gallery
Date: April
2025
Subject:
Presenter:
Location:
The Garden Gallery
The talk will
be followed by the AGM.
