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 our Chairman, Ernst Zillekens, ldhschair@gmail.com in the first instance.
Our next meeting is on 2nd April. We will have a brief AGM, and then Heather Hurley returns to speak about “The hidden history of Chase Hill” – a familiar landmark to anyone living in or near Ross-on-Wye, but also a place with an interesting past.
Programme2025
| 2nd April | AGM | Heather Hurley : The Hidden History of Chase Hill, Ross |
The 2025/26 Programme will be announced at the AGM.
Review of our February meeting
We began 2025 with a talk mingling science, architecture and observation. Dr. Andy Moir leads one of only a handful of companies working on the dating of buildings using dendrochronology. However, even amateurs and non-scientists can guess an approximate date for timber framed buildings by looking at some clues, though this may entail a visit to the attic!
Herefordshire is particularly rich in timber framed buildings, but as yet has not been the subject of a proper survey. Andy suggested this was a possible project for the Society, especially as Linton has several such buildings, and Ross-on-Wye has many. We learned that the presence of smoke-blackened rafters denoted an “open hall” house, before chimneys became generally included, and such a house can be confidently dated to pre-1550. Other features, such as the change from curved to straight bracing, followed the introduction of the saw pit, which made the production of straight timbers easier. But you would not want to be the “under-dog”, which is not a canine reference at all, but denotes the man working in the pit.
There was a good audience for this interesting and educational talk.
Review of March meeting
Our Chairman’s lecture focussed on one of the most extraordinary women in an century of extraordinary women. Friend to Elizabeth I, and four times married, Bess of Hardwicke went from being one of the daughters of a member of the minor gentry, to being Countess of Shrewsbury, and builder of one of the great houses of the late sixteenth century, Hardwicke Hall (“more glass than wall”).
It was Bess’s second marriage, to Wiliam Cavendish, that became the foundation of her great wealth, and also of the Cavendish dynasty now the Dukes of Devonshire. Cavendish was an official of the Court of Augmentations, and as such had accumulated land and property during the dissolution of the monasteries. Following his marriage to Bess in 1547, he sold some of these lands and bought the estate that was to become Chatsworth. There he and Bess began the building of the house. The couple had eight children.
At his death, in 1557, Bess successfully went to law to ensure that his estate passed to their children rather than to the daughters of his first marriage. Her third marriage brought her the entire estate of her next husband, with an annual income of £60,000, a huge fortune. Her final marriage, to the Earl of Shrewsbury, completed her transition from her relatively humble origins to the aristocracy. Only a year after the marriage, her husband was put in charge of the (effectively captive) Mary Queen of Scots, an onerous position which became a huge financial burden, and which contributed to the breakdown of the marriage. The couple separated, but Bess nevertheless retained financial control. When he died, she began her final project, the building of Hardwicke Hall close to her original family home.
She died at the great age of 87.
Ernst looked at many facets of this fascinating woman, and in particular her clever use of law and her amazing ability to “splash the cash” gained across her marriages.
Ernst is standing down as Chairman at the AGM, when members will have the opportunity to show their appreciation for the excellent way he has led the Society in recent years.
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 :
Ernst Zillekens (Chairman)
Teresa Squires (Secretary)
Roger Davies (Treasurer)
Valerie Boxley (Outings Secretary) 01452 831374
Pamela Bruce
John Foley