IAS – Christmas Puddings

Speaker: Tony Brooks (speaker on Zoom)

In late 2023, Digventures advertised an online project using their training and admin system asking for volunteers to help by looking at one of three different National Trust landscapes using LIDAR and Google Earth to map any visible archaeology in each area in a systematic area in addition to the already recorded Historic Environment Record, the Derbyshire record system. One of the areas investigated was Kinder, looking for evidence of peat extraction. In total just over a thousand people volunteered of which 750 completed the training. Volunteers from 31 countries were supported and trained by a team of 45. The project was split into three stages: Recruitment, Training and investigation.

DAS member Tony Brooks was one of the volunteers and he will describe the project and his experiences of participating.

Speaker: Amy Bracey

In February 2024 an extensive archive came up for auction. Within its pages the daily workings and the lives of the workers are documented. Drawings, photographs and letters bring to life the people who worked for Holmes of Derby - a company who expanded to other towns and to the great coach making city of London. Spanning 150 years of a 500 year coach making history, the archive is of international importance. The talk will give an insight to the company history and explore the items within the archive. Amy Bracey has a degree in Art History and Heritage Management and has worked with museum collections relating to canals, archaeology and decorative arts, but her love of carriages became a career when working for the National Trust, cataloguing their carriage collection. She now works as Project Curator for The Carriage Foundation, an educational charity, and advises museums and individuals across the globe on the care, conservation, history and research of horse-drawn carriages.

Speaker: Jennifer Alexander

Speaker: David Mercer