Please book your tickets in advance. All lectures will be held at 32 Bryant Road, Strood ME2 3EP.

Tickets:
£4 each, or £20 for the whole series.

LECTURE PROGRAMME

28 February 2023, 2pm
Adam Taylor
Islands of the Medway Estuary
(A talk in collaboration with the Friends of Medway Archives)
Abstract: Come and explore the once inhabited islands of the Medway Estuary, enter the shipwreck of a WW1 German submarine, discover the abandoned Victorian forts and find out where the Samphire grows. A chance to learn about the Medway islands without getting your feet wet!


28 March 2023, 2pm
Deborah Collins
Drunkenness, Madness and Bigamy: The staff of Strood Workhouse
Abstract: The conditions for the inmates of workhouses were dependent upon the quality of the workhouse staff and the Strood workhouse had a number of problems with the staff employed. This talk will explore some of their stories.


11 April 2023, 2pm
Dr Jean Baker
An Eighteenth-Century entrepreneur: Sarah Baker and her Kentish Theatres, 1737-1816
Abstract: Sarah Baker was an illiterate fairground performer who become one of the most successful self-made women of the eighteenth century. She opened her Rochester Theatre in 1791. Sarah’s pragmatic, opportunistic reaction to the many challenges she faced not only ensured her own survival but also meant that, albeit inadvertently, she played a hugely influential role in the political, social and cultural development of the rapidly evolving Kentish towns where she built her theatres at the end of the eighteenth century.


23 May 2023, 2pm
Jacob Scott
Rochester Cathedral Heritage
Abstract: The Chapter, staff and volunteers are committed to ensuring the Cathedral and collections serve to their full potential as resources in understanding the past and in facing the evolving challenges and opportunities presented by our world today. Jacob Scott is the Heritage Officer at the Cathedral, working for much of the last ten years in recording, researching and making this huge corpus available freely online. This work is increasingly focused on aspects and persons in the past that have previously been underrepresented in the written and archaeological records, or have perhaps been squeezed out of public interpretation programs by more dominant narratives, towards opening these areas for further research.


20 June 2023, 2pm
Amanda Thomas
The Story of Isaac Newell: From Strood to Argentina and the Seeds of Modern Football
Abstract: Few people realise that one of Argentina’s most legendary historical figures comes from Strood. Isaac Newell was born in 1853 in Taylors Lane, the third child of Joseph Newell of Essex and Mary Ann Goodger, who was from Higham. This talk will look at the family history of Isaac Newell and will explain how, following his emigration to Argentina in 1869, he and his son Claudio started a football club which would shape the future of the international game. It is a story destined to put Strood well and truly on the map, indeed the town has already become a place of pilgrimage for South American football fans.


4 July 2023, 2pm
Dr Alexander Thomas
The Fake Peace within the Textus Roffensis
Abstract: A treasure of Rochester Cathedral and formerly of the Medway Archives, the Textus Roffensis was created by Bishop Ernulf of Rochester and is an example of a 12th century AD codex diplomaticus. Often known as an exclusive encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon and early Kentish law code texts, it is one of just two manuscripts to only contain the Peace of Edward and Guthrum (EGu). For centuries this was thought to be a genuine Viking Age treaty text, but EGu is in fact an infamous forgery created by Archbishop Wulfstan of York. This lecture will explore the Textus itself as well as the impact of the fake text on contemporary research.

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