Old Lectures

(Some lectures, outings, and events from previous years are shown here to indicate the range of topics that can be included in our programmes.)

Banbury Historical Society Programme  September 2022 – July 2023
Date
Subject
Speaker
8th Sep, 2022
The Vikings in the Thames Valley.
This lecture will take an overview of the Vikings in the Thames Valley, from the estuary upstream to Oxfordshire. It will look at raids, battles and massacres, winter camps, burials, hoards, urban settlements, and consider the long-term presence of the Vikings in the area
Professor David Griffiths.
Professor of Archaeology at Oxford University, Director of Studies in Archaeology at the Department for Continuing Education. Member of Board of Governors of the Ashmolean Museum. He has taught at Oxford since 1999, and was previously a professional archaeologist in the UK and Norway. He has directed research fieldwork projects in Orkney, Oxford, and NW England. 
13th Oct,
2022
In all our footsteps:  Rights of Way in History and Experience.
This talk will outline the three-year research project on the history and experience of Rights of Way, funded with a £1m grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and planned to run from 2021 to 2024. The project asks such pressing and profound questions as: what can the history of mapping Rights of Way in post-war England and Wales tell us about voluntary action, landscape decision-making and the barriers faced by both government action and walking activism? How can a greater awareness of historical pathmaking – and understanding of their cultural context as ‘heritage’ or otherwise – be utilised in order to facilitate much broader access to, and deeper engagement with, open spaces? How has the use and experience (or not) of Rights of Way affected the health and wellbeing of socially and physically diverse groups of people? How can focusing on the process of making and remaking Rights of Way help us to understand the links between citizenship, movement in the landscape, and wellbeing?
Professor Glen O’Hara.
Glen O’Hara is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Oxford Brookes University. He is the author of a series of books about modern Britain, including most recently The Politics of Water in Post-War Britain (2017). He is currently writing a history of the Blair governments of 1997-2007.
10th Nov 2022 
Mapping Medieval Oxford.
This lecture is based on research done for the latest volume of the British Historic Towns Atlas, which covers the city of Oxford.  The atlas presents in mapped form the history of its topographical development.
Julian Munby FSA.
Julian has recently retired as Head of Buildings Archaeology at Oxford Archaeology and has been researching the history of Oxford for many years, with a special interest in its buildings and in drawn views of the city.  He has always loved maps.
8th Dec 2022

(See News-
letter of 
7th Dec)
‘The night-time haven of the wandering tribes’: the common lodging-house in Victorian England.
By the early nineteenth century common lodging-houses had become a well-established form of working-class accommodation in English market towns and cities. They had an evil reputation, certainly amongst middle-class commentators, and by the 1830s they were considered to be a serious social problem. They were seen as overcrowded, unsanitary dens of iniquity where delinquency and dishonesty were encouraged, stolen goods were exchanged and incendiary political views might be shared. They were known as centres of sexual depravity and dreaded by many as sources of infection and contagious disease. Using examples from Oxfordshire, this talk investigates the truth of these claims and tries to cast common lodging-houses in a more positive light by looking at the economic and social functions that they fulfilled in relation to the supply of industrial and agricultural labour, to patterns of migration, to retailing, to the treatment of the poor and to the provision of popular entertainment. Their role in prompting reform in the provision of working-class housing and in improvements in public sanitation is also examined.
Liz Woolley.
Liz lives in Oxford and has a Diploma and an MSc in English Local History from the University’s Department for Continuing Education. Her MSc dissertation was a study of common lodging-houses in St Thomas’ in Oxford.
12th Jan
2023
Blackgrounds Farm, Northamptonshire. Excavations at an Iron Age - Roman settlement on the route of HS2.
The building of HS2 has enabled an unprecedented amount of archaeological investigation to be undertaken with the result that many amazing discoveries have been made along the scheme’s route.  Work in Northamptonshire is no exception and James West from MOLA will speak about the large-scale archaeological excavation he directed at Blackgrounds Farm near Chipping Warden.  At Blackgrounds, archaeologists have been able to trace the history of a settlement that started in the Early Iron Age (6th century BC) and eventually became a small Roman town or villa complex, continuing until the 5th Century AD when it was abandoned.  With a thousand years of intensive occupation, the excavation has given us a wealth of archaeological finds and discoveries which illuminate all aspects of life - and death – throughout a period of great cultural changes.
James West. 
James is an Assistant Project Manager with MOLA Northampton and was the Site Manager for the Blackgrounds Excavations as well as many other sites along the route of HS2.
9th Feb
2023
Revising Pevsner’s Oxfordshire.
The Oxfordshire volume of Pevsner’s Buildings of England series was among the last to appear, in 1974. It is being revised, updated and expanded in two volumes, of which Alan Brooks’s Oxfordshire: North and West appeared in 2017. Simon Bradley’s companion volume on Oxford and the south east, to be published in 2023, includes much fresh research and addresses half a century of change.
Dr. Simon Bradley.
Simon is the series editor of the Pevsner Architectural Guides (Yale University Press), and author or co-author of five revised volumes, including Cambridgeshire and Berkshire.
9th Mar
2023
Images in the pre-Reformation English parish church c.1300 – 1553.
The talk will discuss images in late medieval parish churches: how they were chosen and funded, how they functioned within the liturgy and community, and how ultimately they were almost all destroyed. The talk will cover not only sculpted and painted images, but also those in stained glass, wall painting, textiles and other media, supported by local examples where possible.
Eleanor Townsend.
After the Courtauld Institute of Art, Eleanor spent 20 years at the V&A specialising in medieval art, co-curating the Medieval Galleries and the major exhibition, Gothic: Art for England 1400-1547.  She is currently completing a doctorate at the University of Oxford, focusing on a stone reredos in St Cuthbert’s, Wells.
6th Apr