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!

Society day trip to Blenheim Palace will take place on 24th September 2011. At present we aim to leave at 9.30am from Kennet School. You may park in the school car park, not the leisure centre. We will leave Blenheim at around 4.30pm. Please note, the gardens open at 10am, but the Palace is not open to 10.30am. Please ensure you have suitable outdoor clothing incase of bad weather. Any problems, please contact Nick.

Today, 11th June 2011, members of Thatcham Historical Society went to Wallingford Museum. The museum was fantastic covering ancient periods including the stone ages, right up to the modern. There are models of Wallingford Castle showing the vast size of the structure as well as a model railway. Photographs of Wallingford are shown through the museum and there are parts that are made to look like period properties such as a shop front or Public House.

Winterbrook House. Photograph by Ann Allen.

We are once again in May, National History Month. We, Thatcham Historical Society, are celebrating the month with our third annual fact a day which can be found in our events page. For each day of may we will give a short fact on the history of Thatcham and the surrounding area. We are also celbrating with the second annual Peter Allen Memorial Lectures, which take place each Saturday during May. You can find out more about this on the paml.info website.