Reports from monthly meetings
May Meeting Report On Monday 11th May David Jones from the Coquetdale Community Archaeology group gave a most entertaining talk on the group’s investigations into the Medieval Settlement of Linbrig. The site, on the banks of the River Coquet near Alwinton, is described as a settlement rather than a village due to the random scattering of…
February 2026 Meeting Report Bartle Rippon, a lifelong railway enthusiast, was born in Amble where he still lives. As a child and later as a young man he had first hand experience of the comings and goings of cargo on the Amble Branch railway line. The line had closed to passengers in July 1930 but continued for freight…
October 2025 Meeting Report Our 2025/26 season opened with a presentation by playwright Ed Waugh about The Cramlington Train Wreckers who derailed a train on 10th May 1926. Ed set the scene by describing the political and cultural influences that led to the 1926 General Strike which was the biggest rupture in society since the English Civil War. In the half century leading up to the First World War Britain’s share of…
May 2025 Meeting Report On Monday 12th May, following a brief AGM, Moira Kilkenny introduced a talk on ‘Angels of the North Volume 2’, a collection of essays on notable women of the north east which she has co-written with Joyce Quin. Joyce then went on to talk in detail about some of these women who,…
April 2025 Meeting Report This month we welcomed Liz Finch, National Trust volunteer, to speak on ‘The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of Seaton Delaval Hall’. She explained that the Delavals originated from Normandy. They were gifted their land by William the Conqueror, a reward for their support at the Battle of Hastings. They…
March 2025 Meeting Report Bill Openshaw presented his talk, based on his book ‘To the Call of Bugles – A History of the Percy Tenantry Volunteers 1798 – 1814’, dressed in full Light Infantry regalia! Surely a first for Warkworth History Society. Local tenants of the Percy family, including many volunteers from Warkworth, were called…
February 2025 Meeting Report ‘There’s more to a needle than meets the eye!’ This was the intriguing title of Barry Mead’s talk on Monday 3rd February. Barry was the former curator of the Forge Mill Needle Museum in Redditch, centre of the needle making industry from the early C17th. Needles and pins of all kinds, from sewing…
January 2025 Meeting Report Our opening speaker for 2025 was local structural engineer Ian Hume. Whilst employed by English Heritage he was involved in the refurbishment and structural renovation of many iconic structures nationwide. He spoke about four in particular, namely the Iron Bridge in Shropshire, the Tunnel under the Thames, the Crystal Palace, and…
December 2024 Meeting Report For the last meeting of 2024 writer, archaeologist and woodsman, Max Adams, spoke about ‘The Museum of the Wood Age’. There can, of course, be no museum in the normal sense, since wooden objects cannot survive as stone, bronze, iron and other metals do. And yet we were shown how the…
November Meeting Report On Monday 4th November Eleanor George treated us to a very thorough and detailed account of the Bainbridges ‘from Department Store to Eshott Hall’.Many of those present remembered well Bainbridge’s department store in Newcastle before it became part of the John Lewis group. Its founder was Emerson Muschamp Bainbridge, born 1817 into…
October Meeting Report War, plague, monastic life – who knew that cheese could play such an important part in world history? Well, by the end of Sue Brown’s talk on ‘6000 years of cheese history’ those who crowded into the Memorial Hall on Monday 7th October certainly did. We were even treated to a tasting…
On 13th May we welcomed Belinda Booth to speak about the history of our hall, part of a Heritage Project which started in 2019. The story begins in 1866. Adam and Robert Howitt were two of the original founders when it was known as the New Church following a division in the church on the…
