Lewes History Group

Members’ Research Methods Series, Winter 2021/22

This is a series of events for small groups which will include ‘how to’ sessions like these and some very short-term projects on Lewes related topics. There will be more to come in due course. The events will be at the King’s Church, Lewes, or out of doors, as Zoom isn’t the best medium for discussion groups.

Please note, these events are put on for Lewes History Group members. See our Membership page to join the Group.

Course: Palaeography Workshops
These workshops will teach you how to read and interpret old documents
Date: 17 February 2022
Time:
– 10 am Morning Session – Follow-on Palaeography Course
– 2 pm Afternoon Session – Parish Chest meets Palaeography
Venue: King’s Church, Brooks Road, Lewes, BN7 2BY
Tutor: Dr Caroline Adams

Booking: You can book for either or both sessions, but please make clear which session(s) you wish to attend. To book your place, please email Sue Berry at georgianbrighton@gmail.com giving your name. You will have your booking confirmed.

Please note: both sessions are now fully booked

10 am Morning Session – Follow-on Palaeography Course

This is for people with a little experience, such as those who did Caroline Adams’s ‘Starters’ course, but we will revise letter forms and abbreviations as well. Included are a will, a customs document for the Port of Bristol, Anne of Cleves’s accounts, and a 16^th century witch document.

2pm   Afternoon Session – Parish Chest meets Palaeography

This workshop will explore parish records, as well as helping you read them. Included are a register, poor law documents and an inventory, and we will see what documents we might expect to find in a parish collection.

Tutor: Dr Caroline Adams was Senior Archivist at West Sussex Record Office for 20 years, leaving in 2014 to start her own business.  She is now a local historian and palaeographer, researching house and local history and transcribing documents for people.  A large part of her work is now teaching palaeography online, with courses running for an hour a week for five weeks and open to anybody. See www.keytothepast.co.uk for details.

Please note that this course is now fully booked

This course is for Lewes History Group members. See our Membership page to join the Group.

A lot of information about the period between 1851 and 1911 can be obtained from the detail given to the enumerators who collected the forms from households for the decennial census.

Using background notes, and transcripts of pages of the first comprehensive census (1851) we will explore the potential of the information about households for urban, rural, and family history.

Full details and booking information

Please book before 1^st October 2021

A Fitzroy House Event

Julian Bell: Strange South Downs

Julian Bell talks about Harold Mockford, the great senior artist of this region of England.

The oil paintings of Mockford, who was born in Eastbourne in 1932, deliver a unique poetic vision of downland landscape that has long held the admiration of his fellow Sussex artists. Bell will try to put this work in context, relating it to other art of the locality and to the history Mockford has lived through.

Julian Bell is a painter and art writer who has long been based in Lewes. His books include ‘What is Painting?’ and ‘Vincent van Gogh’, and he often contributes to the London Review of Books and New York Review of Books.

Plain, an exhibition of new paintings by Bell, will open at the Star Gallery, Lewes on 1 October – find out more

Venue: Fitzroy House, Lewes

Details and tickets: from Fitzroy House website

Julian Bell in his studio. Image at Fitzroy House website