Whether your interest in history is personal, academic, or just a more general desire to find out how our forefathers lived, the Linton and District History Society offers a friendly welcome and helpful advice.
We meet on the first Wednesday of every month except January, 7 for 7:30 p.m., in Linton Village Hall. Tea and coffee are available at the start of the meeting. Annual membership is £20, and speaker meetings are free to members. Visitors are always welcome, and pay £5 per meeting.
Our programmes aim to cover local, national and international history – there is something for all interests, and we welcome suggestions for topics.
For all enquiries, contact the Society’s Secretary, Mrs Teresa Squires at sec.lintonhistsoc@gmail.com
Our December meeting is our Christmas celebration, and we will be welcoming John Putley as he makes a return to speak about A Gloucestershire ‘Archives’ Christmas.
John says: “It’s clear that there has always been some sort of midwinter festival celebrated in Europe and this presentation will explore the history of Christmas and the customs associated with the ancient midwinter festival, many of which were adopted/hijacked by the Christian celebration. It does deconstruct Christmas to a certain degree, but rest assured it builds it back up again and comes with all the Christmas trimmings including a wealth of images and material pertaining to Christmas that are held in the County archives. So, deck the halls, trim those trees, and settle down with a drop of mulled wine and a mince pie and prepare to be enthralled by the magic of Christmastide!”
We will certainly have seasonal refreshments, so join us on 3rd December at 7 for a 7:30 start to John’s talk.
Programme 2025
| 3rd December | John Putley | A Gloucestershire Christmas |
Programme 2026
| January | NO LECTURE | |
| 4th February | Gillian White | Mary, Queen of Scots |
| 4th March | Roger Davies | Korea and the Glorious GlostersChairman’s Lecture |
| 1st April | AGM | Teresa Squires : A National Trust Pot-Pourri |
Review of our November meeting
For over a century, November has marked our national commemoration of our war dead, and Linton History Society has reflected this in past years, including a talk about one of the young men on our war memorial, Norman Day. Our Chairman, Roger Davies has been instrumental in arranging display material for St. Mary’s Linton, and has personally visited the graves – or memorials where there is no known grave – of all these young men, where he lays a cross with poppy on our behalf.
It was very fitting therefore that our November talk should be about an aspect of the history of the Great War, the nurses who came to be known as The Roses of No Man’s Land. Former Chairman Fiona Morison took her title from a popular sentimental song praising the young women who looked after the wounded.
At the outset of the conflict, Britain actually had a professional corps of qualified nurses under military regulations, the Queen Alexandra’s Military Nurses. These women, the direct descendants of Florence Nightingale, were at the very top of their profession, highly trained, but few in number. Even with the reserve called up, they did not number more than 500, which was to be utterly inadequate for the huge number of casualties incurred. A call therefore went out for volunteers to be nurses, but also all the ancillary workers without which the hospital could not function – cooks, ward cleaners, clerks, dispensers, for instance. Others drove ambulances.
The British Red Cross had already started a scheme for Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs), which was rapidly expanded. Young women flocked to join, many from middle or upper class backgrounds which would have given them little or no preparation for the work they would do and the things they would see.
Although for many people the vision they have of a VAD might be a young woman in a casualty clearing station or hospital in France (due in no small measure to the dramatization of Vera Brittain’s memoir Testament of Youth), the majority of VADs worked in hospitals in the UK, to which many casualties were evacuated. These were often small, and set up in private houses or village halls, with support from the local community. Those who did work abroad were often in great danger, and a number were killed, others succumbing to the diseases that were rife : typhus, typhoid, dysentery and the Spanish Flu.
Fiona ended an excellent talk by giving details of the places in Herefordshire where casualties were treated, giving a local twist to a very well-researched topic.
Family history
We have transferred the main part of our Archive to the Herefordshire Archive and Record Centre, which is also the main port of call for those researching family history. Some of our parish records can be accessed via this link
Articles of interest
Society members write a weekly column for the Ross Gazette, and we are lucky that these are regularly published. If you would like to submit an article, please contact our Secretary.
Committee members :
Roger Davies (Chairman)
Teresa Squires (Secretary)
Nic Walker (Treasurer)
Valerie Boxley (Outings Secretary)
Pamela Bruce