Thatcham Historical Society

A large audience gathered tonight, 18th October, to listen to Richard Fleet’s talk “50 years in space.” Richard showed some examples, from the 1940’s onwards, of what we though space may be like, some now seem quite strange, others were clearly very optimistic. Some of the early spacecraft were shown including Vanguard and Sputnik. The race to put a man in space was won by the Russians when Yuri Gagarin entered orbit in 1961. The race to get to the moon was then on!

Due to various events in April, Thatcham Historical Society was unable to hold their normal Monday evening speaker meeting. Instead we held a special Civil War event on Saturday 16th April.

The first of the two part event saw author Chris Scott present "The First Battle of Newbury." Chris noted that Newbury was the crossroads of Southern England. It is know that the royalists were camped in Victoria Park, however the town supported the Parliamentarians and did not want the Royalists camped nearby.

A large audience gathered tonight, 28th March 2011, to hear Judy Dewey presenting “Wallingford: Burgh to Borough Project.” Judy started with a little background about the town itself, noting that Wallingford, apart from originally being part of Berkshire, is an Anglo-Saxon settlement and has, or rather had, a Castle with a motte and bailey.

The Hungerford Historical Association were this month given a fascinating talk by local man, George Styles, entitled ‘Antique to Contemporary Silverware’. George runs Styles Silver on Bridge Street in Hungerford, having learned the trade from his parents.