Holmes of Derby – Coach Makers to the Monarch and Loyal to the Locals

Speaker: James Clark

Professor Clark has been working with the National Trust and their team at Hardwick Hall, on the ex-monastic, mediaeval vestments (more than 100 pieces) collected by Bess of Hardwick, some of which almost certainly originated at religious houses in the county which attracted the patronage of the Talbots. Some of what has been found in this work will feature in the talk together with other aspects of Derbyshire’s dissolution story.

Professor Clark is the Director of the Societies and Cultures Institute at the University of Exeter and his historical interests are focused on the period between the Black Death and the Break with Rome, exploring religion, learning and book culture in England. He is a regular contributor to TV, Radio, News Media and online coverage of medieval, Reformation and early Renaissance themes. He has been an historical consultant for TV documentaries such as Tudor Monastery Farm for BBC TV, for film dramas and has contributed to a two-part documentary on Thomas Cromwell and the Henrician Reformation presented by Tracy Borman for Channel 5.

His book The Dissolution of the Monasteries – a New History was published in 2022 and his publisher Yale University Press will offer paperback copies at a 20% discount at the time of the lecture.

Speaker: James Foulds

James will talk about the Foulds family which has been at the heart of Derby business and its musical life over four generations.

Organised by the Local History Section

Speaker: Graham Guilbert

The aim will be to explore something of what we know of hillforts in this region, covering considerable variety in their form and density of distribution, and extending west from Derbyshire into the Welsh Marches.  Only a few instances have been investigated sufficiently thoroughly and extensively to allow any confidence in interpretation, and those few can lead us into consideration of certain themes and issues having great influence upon general understanding of hillforts. Graeme’s first engagement with hillforts came in the late 60s, through excavating at Cadbury Castle in Somerset, thereafter focusing upon forts in Wales and its Marches, and more recently extending to those in Derbyshire.  He is never more content than when trying to get to grips with the earthworks of a fort located on some remote hilltop.

Speaker: John Arguile

Derby was never a major force in brewing, its claim to fame was rather as a centre of malting and latterly the last stronghold of publican brewers in the UK. The book on which the talk is based grew out of a study of the Big Six brewers that once dominated UK brewing, currently being serialised by the Brewery History Society.  The talk will deal with the rise and decline of the first common (wholesale) brewers namely Alton & Co; Stretton Brothers and Offiler’s Ltd; the smaller brewers they absorbed; the many publican (home brew pubs) brewers and lastly with their modern counterparts, spawned largely by Gordon Brown’s progressive beer tax regime. John Arguile was a founder member of what became the National Brewery Heritage Trust and has been a contributor to the Brewery History Society since 1986.

Organised by the Industrial Archaeology Section

Speaker: Tony Brooks (speaker on Zoom)

DAS member Tony Brookes will discuss the project DigVentures which ran last year, including the training the participants received and their use of LIDAR and satellite imaging to capture where peat had been extracted in the Kinder Scout area which now is owned by The National Trust.

Speaker: David Mercer