Calendar

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

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to preserve and enhance the information that we previously published in our series of IA Gazetteers that are becoming out of date and out of print.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.

The format is a series of presentations on a wide range of topics, presented by archaeologists, historians and community groups. There are stalls hosted by archaeological organisations with opportunities to handle artefacts, and a fabulous bookshop selling general interest and academic books on all aspects of history, science, archaeology and conservation.