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The Lancashire and Cheshire                
Antiquarian Society

Founded 1883

Charity Registration No 1105708
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FORTHCOMING EVENTS

  

Morris Garratt Memorial Lecture (Zoom) Thursday 8 September, 2022,  7.00pm Alan Crosby will speak on  “The darkest of times? Life and death in the Manchester area in the mid-1790s”

In Lancashire and north Cheshire the mid-1790s were long-remembered as a time of darkness and despair. The war with France was raging, there were desperate shortages of food, price inflation was out of control, civil and social unrest was endemic, political agitation spilled over into violence, and the authorities resorted to draconian measures in order to try to control what they feared was an ungovernable populace. This talk focuses especially on the year 1795, looking at such events as the shootings in Rochdale market place that August, and using contemporary sources to explore what life was like in the region during those troubled and frightening times.


Walk Round Park Bridge, Ashton-Under-Lyne  with Mike Nevell at 2.00 pm Sunday 11 September 2022 looking at the former industrial hamlet.

Now a picturesque village in the Medlock Valley it was once home to the busy ironworks of Hannah Lees and Co and served by a canal and railway. It is said that rivets made there were used in the building of the Eiffel Tower. The walk is part of the Heritage Open Days events and is in conjunction with Tameside Local History Forum. Meet at the Heritage Centre car park (OL6 8AQ).


Castles conference, 15 October 2022 at Chester’s Grosvenor Museum.

A full day’s programme of speakers on castles in the North West is being arranged - details to follow.


Zoom lecture  Wednesday 2 November, 2022 at 2.00pm: '"She seems to have lost the power of looking after her husband and family and her home": family poverty and the welfare state in Cheshire, 1945-74'.

Michael Lambert of the University of Birmingham will use this quote, taken from a social work report on a mother from Sale in the 1950s, as a route into exploring the topic of family poverty in Cheshire.


Zoom lecture Wednesday 7 December 2022, at 2.00pm: Old photographs of Manchester and the Wirral

Dr Ian Mitchell, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Wolverhampton, Centre for Historical Research, will speak on his grandfather’s photographs of Manchester and the Wirral taken in the 1890s and 1900s. Ian inherited 7 albums of photographs by this keen amateur photographer.


Contact secretary@landcas.org.uk for further details and to book a place at these events.

PAST EVENTS

On Sunday 31 July 2022 Mike Nevell led a walk round Warburton looking at the late medieval and post-medieval landscape of the historic village of Warburton. He spoke about 30 years of archaeological research on the village's historic timber-framed church, open fields, deer park, cross, and vernacular buildings. This was part of the CBA Festival of Archaeology www.archaeologyuk.org/festival.html.

On Sunday 8 May 2022 Terry Wyke led a walk round Manchester statues. Public statues have been in the news, so this was an opportune moment to look at them again and be reminded of the historical contexts which led to the commissioning and siting of some of the city's most prominent statues and monuments. Not all public memorials and statuary have survived so consideration was also be given to those many memorials which have been removed. We began in Piccadilly Gardens considering the statues raised on Joseph Paxton's esplanade before making our way towards Albert Square via St Peter's Square.

On Wednesday 13 April 2022 Melanie Giles talked about Bog Bodies.The well-preserved bog bodies of northern Europe have fascinated archaeologists, poets and film-makers, yet their discovery often concerned the communities who found them. In this talk, Dr Melanie Giles (University of Manchester) shared the latest thinking about the phenomenon: explaining the science behind their preservation and the challenges this creates for museum curators, as well as discussing the ethics of displaying such remains. She situated them back within the bogs, mires and mosses from which they came; asking us to think differently about these landscapes and what they meant to prehistoric communities, as well as interrogating different ideas behind their often violent death and deposition in the bog. Amongst the cauldrons, weapons and foodstuffs also ‘offered up’ to the bog, she argued that some of them take their place as part of powerful exchanges with sacred entities but that others represent the ‘right place’ to inter those executed for crimes or dying mysterious or troubling deaths. Ending with the tale of Manchester’s own bog head – Worsley man – she tried to unpick the life and death of this bog head, whose story must be placed within that of the Roman occupation of northern Britain.

On Wednesday 9 February 2022  Professor Nick Mansfield of UCLAN spoke on Thomas Ferriar, Mancunian South American liberator. St Ann’s Church in central Manchester contains a memorial to the Ferriar family. This includes Thomas Ferriar (1785-1821), who was mortally wounded while commanding the British Legion at the crucial battle of Carabobo, under the eyes of Simon Bolivar – ‘the Great Liberator’. This victory secured independence from Spain for Venezuela. Ferriar’s statue figures prominently in the Campo Carabobo national monument. Why did a Mancunian play such a prominent part in the South American liberation movement?

On Wednesday 2 March 2022  Brian Groom, a former senior editor at the Financial Times and editor of Scotland on Sunday, spoke on Northerners, from the Ice Age to the Present Day, based on his forthcoming book Northerners, A History. He laid out the dramatic events that created the north - waves of migration, invasions, battles and transformative changes wrought on European culture and the global economy, with a focus on how the north's people have shaped Britain and the world in unexpected ways.

        

Other past LCAS events include:

Walk at the Bridgewater Canal, 22 August 2021

Walk round All Saints Manchester, 31 July 2021

Edge of Empire: Recording the Romans; Wigan, 5 October, 2019

Visit to Bolton Museum, 9 May 2019

Keeping up with the past; 12 May 2018

Catholic history day; Saturday 12 November 2016

Visit to Wardley Hall; Thursday 3 November 2016

Manchester in the Age of Mrs Gaskell; Saturday 28 November 2015

Visit to Clayton Hall;  Saturday 9 May 2015