Thatcham Historical Society

Whilst working in the bell tower of St. Mary’s Church in 1929, Mr Maskell discovered a small coffin. An infant’s remains were discovered inside and an inquest followed.

An event is being organised to coincide with National Local History Month and also in memory of the late Peter Allen who passed away in May 2009. Hence the series of lectures is to be called “The Peter Allen Memorial Lectures.” The event is being organised by Thatcham Historical Society, but with a great deal of help and support from many individuals and organistions as you can see on our supporters page. To find out more visit the Peter Allen Memorial Lectures website, www.paml.info.

A packed room greeted Geoff Hide who presented his talk “Whitchurch Silk Mill” tonight (29th March 2010).

Geoff noted that there were at least 50 mills in a row and would have been a common sight. All the power to drive the machines would have come from a water wheel. This restricted the location of such mills but also introduced other problems. For example, the speed and power delivered by the water wheel would have been dependent on the volume of water present. Some problems, such as speed and power, could be overcome by the use of a governor which ensured a constant and steady flow of water.

Thatcham Historical Society will visit the Natural History Museum, which houses over 70 million items including collections made by Charles Darwin. The collections are, as the museums name suggests, items from life and earth sciences. The main collections include; Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology and Zoology.

We will depart Thatcham at 9.15am and will arrive back in Thatcham at 5.30pm.

Cost is £15 (covers the coach only, entry to the museum is free).

NOTE (1): The cutoff date for bookings is the 28th June. If we do not have sufficient numbers by this date, the trip will be cancelled.

Additional information – please visit - www.nhm.ac.uk

Thatcham Historical Society will visit Hampton Court Palace, once home to King Henry VIII. There are the beautiful gardens to see and a great many exhibitions including:

• Henry VIII's Great Hall
• Henry VIII: heads and hearts
• Young Henry VIII exhibition
• The world famous Maze
• Tudor kitchens
• The Chapel Royal

We will depart Thatcham at 9.15am and will arrive back in Thatcham at 5.30pm. There may be a short walk to and from the coach at Hampton Court.

Cost (includes travel and entry):

• Adults £25
• 60 and over £23
• 16 or under £19

NOTE (1): We will start collecting money at our March meeting (29th).

You may ahve noticed some issues with the avaialblity of our website this past week. This has been due to the number of people visiting our site and the old server not being able to cope with the load. We have now moved to a new, more powerful server, hosted by EUKHost, to avoid such problems in the future.