Speaker: Jennifer Alexander

Melbourne’s parish church stands out as a fine Romanesque church, built in the 12th century and covered in sculpture. It was intended to be a royal church and presents a statement of power by a king eager to be regarded as a player on the international stage. Its later history was quieter, and it is one of the few churches of the period that comes down to us largely unaltered, and so we can see, by close study of the building, how King Henry I’s master mason demonstrated the king’s power in his design of the building.

Jennifer Alexander FSA is Professor of Art History at the University of Warwick

THIS MEETING IS NOW ONLINE ONLY VIA ZOOM

Friday 16 January 2026 at 7.30pm Zoom only

Industrial History Online

John Suter

Industrial History Online is a free, publicly accessible, volunteer-maintained website that was originally developed by members of the Yorkshire and Historical Society to communicate information about industrial heritage sites through text, maps and images. It now aims to cover the whole of the UK mainland and holds over 30,000 site records.

DAS is joining this initiative to preserve and enhance the information that we previously published in our series of IA Gazetteers that are becoming out of date and out of print. To start the process, John Suter who is the administrator of the website will give us an online demonstration of how it works and examples of the information contained.

After the meeting we will be looking for volunteers to review and enhance Derbyshire information on the website. This is an excellent opportunity to undertake some ‘armchair archaeology’ to share your knowledge and preserve it for future generations.

Speaker: Tim Bennett

Tim is a professional artist, illustrator, and experimental archaeologist – he introduces this topic as follows:

The journey of the Elka Project began after a deeply personal moment: my brother and I reconnected at the funeral of one of our siblings. Though we lived in the same town, we rarely saw each other. To keep in touch, we decided to share a hobby, and our mutual love of history led us to take up metal detecting. It wasn’t long before I realised that my true interest lay not in the detecting itself, but in the research – exploring potential sites of past human activity through LiDAR imaging and historical map analysis.

One day, while studying LiDAR data, I noticed a series of intriguing features hidden within a local woodland. After contacting the DCC Archaeology Department, I was encouraged to turn this discovery into a community archaeology project – and that’s how the Elka Project Ilkeston was born. Since that first woodland discovery, many more sites of archaeological potential have come to light in my local area. My brother and I worked side by side to build the community group and plan excavations, but tragically, he passed away before we could begin our first dig.

Despite my loss, the project continued to grow and evolve. It led me back to university, where I completed an MA in Experimental Archaeology. Today, thanks to support from EMH Homes, we have our own dedicated space for experimental archaeology and educational workshops. By chance, our workshop sits beside a six-acre site containing possible evidence of a medieval coal mine plant and the area of a once 15th-century bridge. An excavation of the site with a test trench is scheduled for May 2026.