The Bathford Society
All talks take place in the Parish Hall, Church Street, Bathford, at 8.00 pm and coffee is available from 7.30pm, except for the talk on 30th September 2024, which starts at 7:30pm with coffee from 7:00pm. Visitors and new members are welcome. £3.00 charge for non-members at the door.
Date |
Talk |
| 30th September 2024 | "West Country criminals including one or two from Bathford!" by Eve Bickerton, Archivist, Somerset Heritage CentreThe West country has had its fair share of criminals and their crimes when discovered led to retribution including hanging, imprisonment and transportation. Serious crimes committed locally would be tried at Taunton, and sometimes to save the expense, the charges would be downgraded so that they could be tried locally in Bath. Justice was savage and often took place against a background of poverty and hunger, scarcely mitigated by the poor laws. In this talk, Eve will trawl through the records and bring to life crime and its consequences as experienced by some of our unfortunate ancestors. |
| 28th October 2024 | "Claverton, our near neighbour" by Glennis Naylor, a Claverton Parish Councillor and local historianClaverton is a small village of just over 100 people with more than its share of history. It was part of the Anglo-Saxon Hundreds of Hampton, and operated under the Frankpledge system of collective responsibility. Its parish church has a Norman Tower and a seventeenth century peal of bells. The old manor house stood on the descent of a hill; and was besieged and captured by a parliamentarian force in the civil war. The present house, rebuilt, is now the American Museum. The Pumping Station has its own history. The weir is beautiful but locally contentious. Glennys will guide us through the history and introduce us to a few earlier residents on the way. |
| 25th November 2024 | Annual General Meeting and Social |
| 27th January 2025 | "Bathford Mill through the ages and today" by Andy Nash, Managing Director PortalsBathford Mill is recorded in the Domesday Book and was probably in operation for many years before that date. It then owned 12 acres of Meadow and was worth ten pounds, a sum today that is incalculable. It used to grind, amongst others, corn and fullers earth and was an important source of employment in the village. Today, it is a high-tech high-value enterprise, producing security paper for passports, certificates and so on, and for an international market. So, the Mill has been around for a long time and is likely to be here for at least the foreseeable future. Andy will tell the story of the Mill; past, present and future. |
| 24th February 2025 | "The balance between preservation and development" presented by Alex Sherman, Chief Executive, Bath Preservation TrustBath Preservation Trust (BPT) campaigns for and promotes the conservation of sustainable enhancement and celebration of the unique and historic City of Bath as a World Heritage Site. Giving an example from Bathford, Alex will explain how the Trust balances the need to preserve the unique features of our beautiful city without inhibiting its development in an environment which is both economically and technically demanding. BPT reviews all planning applications and development proposals for Bath and its environs every year and responds to those which may have a major impact to the integrity and World Heritage status of the city. BPT also provides informed planning advice to homeowners of historic houses and listed buildings. |
| 31st March 2025 | "Bathford before the NHS" presented by John Daniels, author.The NHS, with its many limitations, aims in theory to provide healthcare from cradle to grave and probably in Bathford with our local providers we do better than most. However, what happened before the NHS when government was effectively absent from the scene? In this talk, John Daniels who has researched the topic will tell us of the Bath Hospital Box scheme which was a voluntary subscription scheme in which Bathford, one of over 80 local wards in Bath, West Wilts and North Somerset, set up a local committee to collect quarterly contributions from home collecting boxes. Initially established to rescue the Royal United Hospital from debt and closure (under the chairmanship of Frank Pine, the grandfather of John), the scheme expanded to cover a wide range of benefits including dentistry and spectacles. |
| 28th April 2025 | "Bathford and its Roman Roads - Who, Why, What, Where and How?" by Mike Haken, Chairman, Roman Roads Research AssociationThe Fosse Way not only forms the Western boundary of our Parish but is a fundamental part of the network of Roman roads provided a basic framework for our national infrastructure. However, their development in an era that was, compared to today, technically unsophisticated, might at first seem almost miraculous. Questions arise such as: The Fosse Way did not arrive at Lincoln by accident, so how were roads planned and set out? Where did the labour used to construct the roads come from: was it forced, military, or something else? How were roads administered and who paid for them? What were the basic principles which determined how the roads were built and surfaced? From where did the Romans acquire the materials required for construction? Why were Roman roads so straight while most later roads tended to meander? Mike Haken, our speaker, has travelled from Yorkshire to answer these and other questions using the Fosse Way and a few other roads as examples. |