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 next meeting is on 6th August, when our Society’s former Secretary Jonquil Dodd offers an appraisal of the way that the reputation of Richard III has changed in the 540 years since the Battle of Bosworth. The last Plantagenet king, and the last king to die in battle, Richard’s reputation for many years rested on the narrative created by writers currying favour with the Tudors. But he is also that rarity, a king with a “fan club”. How did Richard, this allegedly bad man and worse King, end up being laid to rest in 2015 with pomp and ceremony, a congregation of the great and the good led by three representatives of the reigning monarch, and even a poem by the then Poet Laureate?
Programme 2025
| 6th August | Jonquil Dodd | Grant Me The Carving Of My Name : the reputation of Richard III |
| 3rd September | Tony Conder | A History of Gloucestershire Inland Waterways |
| 1st October | Simon Draper | Place NamesFounders’ Lecture in memory of Lee Hines |
| 5th November | Fiona Morison | The Roses of No Man’s Land |
| 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 July meeting
Dr. Stephen Blake gave us a well-illustrated trip along The Cotswold Way – 102 miles of history. Running from Chipping Campden to Bath, the path was established in 1970, and takes in both outstanding natural features and vistas and many points of historical interest. We time-travelled from prehistoric Belas Knapp to the industrial archaeology of the Stroud Valleys and even to the Cold War “secret bunker” of the Royal Observation Corps. We “scratched Gloucestershire and found Rome”, and we could see plentiful evidence that “God was in Gloucestershire”, especially in the Winchcombe area where the Way literally traces a pilgrimage route. We met characters as diverse as William Tyndale and William Morris, considered Robert Dover’s Cotswold Olympic Games, and looked down on the site of the last private battle held on English soil, the battle of Nibley Green. Stephen hoped that his talk might encourage members to walk some of this fascinating footpath.
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