Molesey Local History Society
 

 Past Events 

 
 
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September 19th 2008

40th Anniversary of 1968 Floods.

Members and visitors packed Mole Hall for an audio-visual evening commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the 1968 Floods. The programme included BBC newsreels, amateur film footage, eye-witness accounts from some of those living in Molesey at the time, and a host of photographs.
 


June 18th 2008

Thames Riverbank Walk, followed by a talk by Tony Osborne at Molesey Boat Club.

A leisurely stroll on a fine evening along the riverbank from Hampton Court Station to Molesey Boat Club was followed by a dip into Tony Osborne’s history box with revelations about the Thames Canal Scheme of 1805 and the proposed Molesey Boulevard of 1918, both of which were abandoned following objections from local residents. Plus ça change!


May 21st 2008

Talk on the Hampton Court Fire in 1986 by Dennis Ashbourne.

Another good turn out for our second visit to the Clore Centre at Hampton Court Palace. With the aid of wonderful photographs Dennis Ashbourne described the drama of the fire which gutted the State Apartments of William and Mary. He then took us on the painstaking journey from the damp and smouldering remains to the complete restoration of the South Wing which was re-opened in 1992.


April 24th 2008

AGM, followed by a talk on ‘The Thames and Riverside Houses from Hampton Court to Hampton’ by John Sheaf.

The Society’s first AGM, held at St. Lawrence Junior School, attracted a good crowd and the formal business of the meeting was completed without incident. John Sheaf then gave an illustrated and well researched talk on the history of The Thames and its environment from Platt’s Eyot to Hampton Court, a distance of only one and a half miles, but packed with historical interest.


March 6th 2008

Talk by Dr. Ken Brown on ‘History of Hospitals and the NHS in Molesey’

Over one hundred members and visitors came to the Molesey Youth Centre to hear Dr. Ken Brown give a fascinating illustrated talk about medicine in Molesey. The first part of his talk was about the cottage hospitals, of which there have been three. Dr. Brown then went on to give an engaging personal account of the NHS in Molesey in 1960, when he first came down from Scotland to join a practice in Molesey.
 


January/February 2008

Visit to Surrey History Centre

During January and February two groups from the Society visited the Surrey History Centre to take a tour behind the scenes. The History Centre, which is in Goldsworth Road Woking, was opened in 1999. The building was purpose built to provide the best possible conditions for the preservation of the historic documents stored there and for public access to these documents.
 


January 15th 2008

Members’ Evening

Despite the wind and rain, there was a good turnout of members at St Paul’s Church for a social evening and to hear reports from our Research Groups. There were displays around the Church of photos, maps and other memorabilia, and many members brought along items from their own collections.
 


November 13th 2007

Family History Talk ‘Relative Connections: Sources for Family History at Surrey History Centre’

About 60 members and visitors came to Vine Hall to hear a talk by Jill Hyams from the Surrey History Centre about family history sources at Surrey History Centre.
 


September 7th 2007

History of the 1st Molesey Scout Group

Molesey was one of the first Scout groups to be set up after the founder Lord Baden-Powell had the idea to run groups to teach boys how to be good citizens in 1907. The evening, held during 1st Molesey’s Centenary celebrations, consisted of short talks coupled with displays of memorabilia and photos collected by the 1st Molesey Scout Group over many years.
 


July 30th 2007

Visit to Royal Holloway College

In the last years of his life, between 1881 and 1883, Thomas Holloway, a self-made multi-millionaire whose fortune had been made in patent medicines, paid well over £80,000 (equivalent to more than 6 million pounds in today's terms) for the seventy seven paintings which make up the Royal Holloway Collection. Visitors were given a tour of the Chapel and Quads, a talk on the picture collection and a visit to the College archives.
 


June 27th 2007

Historic Molesey Walk

On a rather wet Wednesday at the end of June, a large number of members turned out to hear Tony Osborne give a short talk based around a walk in the Conservation area of East Molesey Old Village. He showed a number of maps, illustrating how the area had changed since the days of King Henry VIII, and where remnants of boundary walls, buildings and roads could still be seen today, and also displayed photographs of buildings which unfortunately are no longer standing. Having heard the talk, the braver souls walked the walk. The rest of us went to the historic pub – The Bell.
 


May 27th 2007

Talk by Ian Franklin on ‘Grace and Favour Apartments at Hampton Court’

The first event of the Molesey Local History Society took place, appropriately, in the grand surroundings of Hampton Court Palace. More than 100 members met at the Clore Centre, the new education facility at Hampton Court, for refreshments and a brief talk by Rita Ashbourne about the centre. We then moved across the courtyard into the Barrack Block, where Ian Franklin gave us an informative and amusing illustrated talk about the Grace and Favour apartments. Ian has been associated with the Palace as a local historian for 25 years, and has been a State Apartment Warder for ten years.