What’s On

25 Jun

Join us for a tour of the Old Graveyard (the Victorian Cemetery) on Marlborough Common – Fully Booked

Kim Wakeham is kindly leading a tour of Marlborough’s Old Cemetery on the evening of Wednesday 25 June. We meet at 6.30 pm by the Rugby clubhouse on the Common and, after the walking tour, there will be an opportunity for MHS members to have a drink in the clubhouse.

Known locally as the Old Graveyard or the Victorian Cemetery, the first burials in the former Municipal Borough Cemetery were in 1835. These were in the public burial area and coincided with the opening of Marlborough Union Workhouse.

Following the requirements of the 1853 Burial Act which required parishes in England and Wales to close existing Parish Church cemeteries, the cemetery was extended to include burials from St. Peter’s Church, St. Mary’s Church  (Anglican burials) and the Methodist Church (non-conformist burials). The setting, interior design and layout of the cemetery incorporated many features which were outlined in the highly influential pamphlet by JC Loudon ‘On the laying out, planting, and managing of cemeteries, and on the improvement of churchyards’ published in 1843. The cemetery was closed in 1924.

Aspects of the original design can still be deciphered today. When these are considered alongside the lives of the people who are buried in the cemetery, a snapshot of Marlborough’s Victorian social history can be explored.

HOW TO BOOK:
This is now FULLY BBOKED.
We are pleased to announce we will be running a second tour on Wednesday 2nd July.  You can book your place by contacting John Osborne at jeo66@btinternet.com or by telephone.

2 Jul

Join us for a tour of the Old Graveyard (the Victorian Cemetery) on Marlborough Common

We are delighted that MHS members have booked in large numbers for the first tour of the Old Cemetery on Wednesday 25 June. If you missed the chance to book your spot, we’re excited to announce a second tour has been scheduled. Please see below for tour details and how to book:

Kim Wakeham is kindly leading a second tour of Marlborough’s Old Cemetery on the evening of Wednesday 2nd July. We meet at 6.30 pm by the Rugby clubhouse on the Common and, after the walking tour, there will be an opportunity for MHS members to have a drink in the clubhouse.

Known locally as the Old Graveyard or the Victorian Cemetery, the first burials in the former Municipal Borough Cemetery were in 1835. These were in the public burial area and coincided with the opening of Marlborough Union Workhouse.

Following the requirements of the 1853 Burial Act which required parishes in England and Wales to close existing Parish Church cemeteries, the cemetery was extended to include burials from St. Peter’s Church, St. Mary’s Church  (Anglican burials) and the Methodist Church (non-conformist burials). The setting, interior design and layout of the cemetery incorporated many features which were outlined in the highly influential pamphlet by JC Loudon ‘On the laying out, planting, and managing of cemeteries, and on the improvement of churchyards’ published in 1843. The cemetery was closed in 1924.

Aspects of the original design can still be deciphered today. When these are considered alongside the lives of the people who are buried in the cemetery, a snapshot of Marlborough’s Victorian social history can be explored.

HOW TO BOOK:
Please book a place by contacting John Osborne at jeo66@btinternet.com or by telephone.

18 Sep

The Free Family of Marlborough

TALK: The Free family had  major businesses in the town from over one hundred years ago, the family having moved to the area in the 19th century to “harvest” the sarsens scattered over the Marlborough Downs. Later generations branched into other fields and the Free family also took an active part in the affairs of the Borough. Their name is remembered in Free’s Avenue on Marlborough Common.

SPEAKER:  David Chandler was born in Marlborough and started his working life in the family saddlery business which used to supply the many racing stables in the area. We are remembered with a “Yard”  to the side of the White Horse bookshop where my great great grandfather Thomas Chandler opened the first shop in the mid 1800’s.

16 Oct

Ramsbury, the Town That Never Quite was: The 1100-year Story of Marlborough’s Kennet Valley Neighbour

TALK: Seven miles from Marlborough – the classic distance between medieval markets – Ramsbury shares the same Kennet Valley environment as its neighbour but has a very different story to tell. Once the seat of Anglo-Saxon bishops and now the hub of a vibrant modern community, the intervening centuries have seen it repeatedly re-fashion itself in response to the changing economic and social demands of the wider world.

SPEAKER: Rowan Whimster has lived in north Wiltshire for more than 30 years, first in Marlborough and since 2006 down the road in Ramsbury. He began his career as an aerial archaeologist and later worked with English Heritage, the National Trust and some of the other organisations who look after this country’s most precious places. More locally, he is Trustee of the Merchant’s House and the author of Ramsbury: A Place and its People.

20 Nov

The Boy Ghost of Bowood

TALK: Nine year old William Granville Petty, son of the earl of Shelburne, sadly unexpectedly died at Bowood House near Calne in Wiltshire in January 1778 following a short illness.

Historical research is used to uncover a series of extraordinary happenings that can only be described as “supernatural”. It poses unsettling questions within an apparent “Age of Reason” and “Enlightenment”.

The boy William had apparently run out to meet his doctor after he had died. Dr Christopher Allsup witnessed the visitation and swore to his dying day it was real. He related it in his death bed confession to the Reverend Joseph Townsend, rector of St John the Baptist Pewsey. Allsup later had the White Horse cut on Cherhill Down: no-one knows why.

William had apparently foreseen his funeral procession in a dream which he related to his tutor, Dr Joseph Priestley. Priestley was tutor to William and his brother John, companion to the earl of Shelburne and had discovered oxygen in his laboratory at Bowood 3½ years previously.

The story of the visitation and the uncanny dream was published in the reputable journal, “The Kaleidoscope: or, Literary and Scientific Mirror”. It re-appeared in the autobiography of the anti-slavery campaigner, Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, who heard the story from her mother who knew Joseph Priestley’s wife Mary.

SPEAKER: Nick Baxter MA lectures widely on local history subjects and leads guided walks. For the past three years he has tutored on Discovering Marlborough’s History for Marlborough College Summer School.