Derby and Ale

Speaker: James Clark

Professor Clark has been working with the National Trust and their team at Hardwick Hall, on the ex-monastic, mediaeval vestments (more than 100 pieces) collected by Bess of Hardwick, some of which almost certainly originated at religious houses in the county which attracted the patronage of the Talbots. Some of what has been found in this work will feature in the talk together with other aspects of Derbyshire’s dissolution story.

Professor Clark is the Director of the Societies and Cultures Institute at the University of Exeter and his historical interests are focused on the period between the Black Death and the Break with Rome, exploring religion, learning and book culture in England. He is a regular contributor to TV, Radio, News Media and online coverage of medieval, Reformation and early Renaissance themes. He has been an historical consultant for TV documentaries such as Tudor Monastery Farm for BBC TV, for film dramas and has contributed to a two-part documentary on Thomas Cromwell and the Henrician Reformation presented by Tracy Borman for Channel 5.

His book The Dissolution of the Monasteries – a New History was published in 2022 and his publisher Yale University Press will offer paperback copies at a 20% discount at the time of the lecture.

Speaker: Amy Bracey

In February 2024 an extensive archive came up for auction. Within its pages the daily workings and the lives of the workers are documented. Drawings, photographs and letters bring to life the people who worked for Holmes of Derby - a company who expanded to other towns and to the great coach making city of London. Spanning 150 years of a 500 year coach making history, the archive is of international importance. The talk will give an insight to the company history and explore the items within the archive. Amy Bracey has a degree in Art History and Heritage Management and has worked with museum collections relating to canals, archaeology and decorative arts, but her love of carriages became a career when working for the National Trust, cataloguing their carriage collection. She now works as Project Curator for The Carriage Foundation, an educational charity, and advises museums and individuals across the globe on the care, conservation, history and research of horse-drawn carriages.

Speaker: James Foulds

James will talk about the Foulds family which has been at the heart of Derby business and its musical life over four generations.

Organised by the Local History Section

Speaker: Graham Guilbert

The aim will be to explore something of what we know of hillforts in this region, covering considerable variety in their form and density of distribution, and extending west from Derbyshire into the Welsh Marches.  Only a few instances have been investigated sufficiently thoroughly and extensively to allow any confidence in interpretation, and those few can lead us into consideration of certain themes and issues having great influence upon general understanding of hillforts. Graeme’s first engagement with hillforts came in the late 60s, through excavating at Cadbury Castle in Somerset, thereafter focusing upon forts in Wales and its Marches, and more recently extending to those in Derbyshire.  He is never more content than when trying to get to grips with the earthworks of a fort located on some remote hilltop.

Speaker: Tony Brooks (speaker on Zoom)

DAS member Tony Brookes will discuss the project DigVentures which ran last year, including the training the participants received and their use of LIDAR and satellite imaging to capture where peat had been extracted in the Kinder Scout area which now is owned by The National Trust.

Speaker: David Mercer