KING ATHELSTAN

 by Judith Cooper

        

Athelstan was the son of Edward the Elder and grandson of Alfred the Great. He was born to Edward’s 1^st wife Ecgwynn around 894

The Anglo Saxon period began when the Romans left Britain in 410

The German speaking Anglo Saxon groups who had steadily been migrating to the Southern half of Britain from NW Europe. They occupied Britain for approximately six centuries from 410-1066.  By 495 the Kingdom of Wessex was in Anglo Saxon hands, and they steadily captured other parts of land from the Danes. 

Martha Brown - 1811-1856

 

by Patricia Cook

The Prison bell tolled 8am................

She had slept just a couple of hours, tossing and turning until one of the two female wardens brought in a cup of tea.    Martha was led on foot to the North Wall of the prison where 11 and 19 steps led to the gallows high above the North Wall.      This is now the car-park.   She was accompanied by the Prison Chaplain the Reverend Dacre Clemetson.  It was to him on the 7th August on death-row that she admitted she had killed her husband John Brown.  He had counselled her on religious studies and had a good understanding of Martha as a person.   He walked alongside her up the first flight of eleven steps but out of sheer emotion, he could go no further.   Martha walked the last 19 steps where her hands and legs were tied, a white cotton cloth put over the head and the noose put around her neck.

AMELIA STEWART KNIGHT – A Pioneer woman

 

By Nigel Watt 

On Saturday 9^th April 1853, Amelia Stewart Knight started the biggest journey of her life.  In her diary she wrote:

“Started for home about 11 o’clock and travelled eight miles and camped in an old house; night cold and frosty.”

Amelia was not alone.  She was with her English born husband, Joel, who she married in Boston in 1834.  She had her children: her sons: Plutarch, aged seventeen; Seneca, aged fifteen; Jefferson, aged eleven; Chatfield, a two-year-old.  And then there were the daughters: Frances, thirteen years of age; Lucy, an eight-year-old, and Almira, just five.  A bit of a handful you might think, given how young some of them were, but Plutarch and Seneca would certainly be strong enough to help with the physical demands of the journey, and husband Joel was a doctor, invaluable expertise for a large family about to embark on a 2000 mile trek lasting the best part of five months.

Thomas Foxwell Buxton

 by

Lester Cowling

 Slavery’s been around forever.

It thrived in Roman times. And the Vikings had a sort of international slave market in Dublin.

But during the middle ages it faded away in the British Isles and much of Europe.

By the 17th century it was back.

Barbary Coast pirates were seizing English sailors and selling them as slave labour in North Africa, then an outpost of the Ottoman empire.

They’d long preyed on ports and ships in the Mediterranean.

Now they moved north.

Between 1609 and 1616 England lost 466 merchant ships to Barbary pirates.

During the 17th century at least 25 seafarers from Lyme Regis were enslaved.

It’s estimated over a million people were seized altogether.

 Meanwhile England was building a colonial empire in North America and augmenting it with Caribbean islands, starting in 1625 with the sparsely populated Barbados.

ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL

 by Oscar Winsey

Brunel was born at Portsea Portsmouth in 1806 His father was a French émigré who escaped the French Revolution and fled to America but love took him to England where he married Mary Horsley.  With a letter of introduction from Alexander Hamilton he approached Lord Spencer first lord  of the admiralty with an idea to mass produce blocks which was accepted by the Admiralty and hence his living near the dockyard.  Blocks were in wide use for rigging and hauling cannons.  His invention enabled 10 unskilled men to do the work of 110 craftsmen.. The requirement was for  100,000 blocks per annum.

 

SIR JOSEPH BAZALGETTE – THE GREAT VICTORIAN CIVIL ENGINEER

 by John Pennington

Born 1819 Enfield

Died 1891 Wimbledon

Family originally from France, as with Brunel. He was a friend of Brunel and was probably his equal as an engineer, but in a somewhat different field.

As a civil engineer, he was perhaps the person who did more for public health than any other in 19 C.

He placed great emphasis on using high quality materials and contractors for his works. Portland cement with its greater strength was very good for the sewer wall brickwork and other construction.

He was the leading figure in developing sewers, roads, bridges, drainage, open spaces and social housing in London, other parts of UK and overseas.

Hertha Ayrton

 by Jenny Meader

Hertha Ayrton was born Phoebe Sarah Marks in Portsea, Hampshire, England, on 28 April 1854. She is usually known by the name Hertha Ayrton, so for the purposes of this talk I will use this name. She was the third child of a Polish Jewish watchmaker named Levi Marks, an immigrant from Tsarist Poland; and Alice Theresa Moss, a seamstress. After Levi Marks’s death in 1861, his widow Alice, who was then pregnant with their eighth child, supported the entire family by her needlework, until they were old enough to go out to work. Hertha then took up some of the responsibility for caring for the younger children.

Dorchester - fortress on the fringe of the Roman Empire

Lester Cowling

Dorchester is likely to have come into existence as a wooden frontier fort guarding the fringe of the Roman Empire. A town evolved around it, and all trace of the original fort has now disappeared. The town itself was originally conceived and originated by Romans.

In The Mayor of Casterbridge Hardy only slightly exaggerated when he wrote of his fictionalised Dorchester -

“Casterbridge announced old Rome in every street, alley, and precinct…”

Maybe Roman heritage was more apparent before there was so much tarmac and concrete.

The Last Queen of Italy

by Linda Hansford

Marie-José Charlotte Sophie Amelie Henriette Gabrielle of Belgium

Born 4 August 1906 – 27 January 2001

Her tenure as queen consort from 9 May-12 June 1946 earned her the nickname “The May Queen” or the “May Butterfly”.

Princess Marie-José was born in Ostend, the youngest child and only daughter of King Albert I of the Belgians (1875-1934) and his consort, Duchess Elisabeth of Bavaria.  This was an eventful period in the history of Belgium which included WW1 when 90% of Belgium was overrun, occupied and ruled by the German Empire, the Treaty of Versailles and the reconstruction of Belgium.

ITALY AND THE MEDICAL RENAISSANCE

by Nigel Watt

When was the Renaissance?

·         The Renaissance was a period of European history that lasted, approximately, from the fourteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth century.

·         The “high-point” of the Renaissance was in the 16^th Century.

Although it had its origins in Italy, the Renaissance had a significant impact across the northern and western Europe.  New ideas and influences crossed the continent in different directions as people travelled and traded more widely.

Some of the history of Sardinia

By Jenny Meader

A few years ago, we went on holiday to Sardinia. We stayed near Alghero on the North West coast.  I was amazed to discover that the main language spoken there was not Italian, but Catalan.  Why was this?

There are 4 main languages spoken in Sardinia, with local variations within this languages.

So why so many languages in an island that’s only about 160 miles long?  Sardinia has a complicated language topology because it has a very complicated history.

The Italian who came to Dorset and changed the world

Lester Cowling

Guglielmo Marconi was born at Bologna in April 1874 - the son of an Italian landowner and an Irish/Scottish mother Annie Jameson from the Jameson Irish whiskey family.

His elementary education was in Bedford before being tutored at home and  schools in Italy. He spoke fluent English.

He was fascinated by electricity and by the work of the German scientist Heinrich Herz. And he became captivated by the idea of transmitting messages by “Herzian waves” - what we now call radio waves.

Herz had identified them. Marconi was the man who was going to exploit them. 

Giuseppe Garibaldi 1807 - 1882

 by Oscar Winsey

Garibaldi played an important part in the birth of Italy in the 19^th century he was a colourful character who does not get enough recognition in the history books being associated with a brand of biscuit, my short talk will endeavour to put that right.  In 1815 the map shows a jumble of states which he helped to unify into modern day Italy over a period of sixty years.