2025
15th January – Ghost Signs in Leicestershire – Colin Hyde
Ghost signs are not a new phenomenon. As defined by our collection parameters, a ghost sign is a ‘hand-painted advertisement that has been preserved on a building’, typically on houses or buildings at busy intersections. Leicester is privileged with a variety of ghost signs that advertise everything from foodstuffs and pubs to clothing and shoes, funeral directors and car repair to engineering and manufacturing. Scattered throughout the city, they are hard to miss but only once you know to look for them. They are pieces of heritage that blend into the urban landscape; however, their mutual coexistence with the urban turns ghost signs into cultural and economic markers. They become inextricably linked to the identity of a place.
Colin has been working with oral history archives since the 1980s and is currently managing the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project at the University of Leicester. Colin also has an interest in local history in Leicestershire & Rutland, and photographing and recording urban and rural environments, which is how the current talk developed.
19th March ––The stained glass of the Horwood Brothers – the life and times of a provincial Victorian firm – Jeff Hopewell
From very humble beginnings the three youngest of the six Horwood Brothers were educated by the Rector of Mells, Somerset, who was also the Lord of the Manor, at his private academy and his curate taught them the art of stained glass. With his sponsorship they were soon working for some of the major names in Victorian church architecture, such as Butterfield and Street. Their work in this country spans a period of over 40 years, from 1852 to 1895.
The talk is a story of social mobility in which three generations of the same family moved from being an impoverished farm labourer (and convict, having stolen some barley and peas to feed his family) to respected craftsmen to highly-regarded professionals. It looks at how the Horwoods gained commissions, and from whom, and why certain designs were chosen as suitable memorials.
Jeff Hopewell is a retired priest and Canon Emeritus of Leicester Cathedral. He has long been interested in church architecture and furnishings and has written a book on the Glaswegian stained glass artist, Douglas Hamilton.
21st May – Historic Building Mythbusting – James Wright
James Wright said: “Go to any mediaeval building in the land and there will be interesting, exciting and romantic stories presented to the visitor. They are commonly believed and widely repeated – but are they really true?” He goes on to say: “These stories include those of secret passages linking ancient buildings, spiral staircases in castles giving advantage to right-handed defenders, ship timbers used in the construction of buildings on land, blocked doors in churches which are thought to keep the Devil out, and claims to be the oldest pub in the country. Delightful as these tales are, they can be a tad misleading in some cases and absolute myths in others.”
For example, tales of hidden tunnels are often connected to the Reformation and an emerging cultural identity which was suspicious of Catholicism. The spiral staircase myth was invented in 1902 by an art critic obsessed with spirals, left-handedness, and fencing – it is intricately bound up with the Victorian obsession with militarism. Ship timber yarns can be linked to the ideals of a seafaring nation. Blocked doors in churches are connected to forgotten processions on church feast days. The talk even looks at the archaeological evidence which points to the possible identification of what may genuinely be the oldest pub in the land.
Understanding the truths behind the myths is just one part, he will also seek to understand how those tales came to be.
Dr James Wright of Triskele Heritage is an award winning buildings archaeologist. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the past.
16th July – Revolting Robert and the 1173 Siege of Leicester – Exploring the rise and fall of Robert de Beaumont, 3rd Earl of Leicester – Jim Butler
17th September – Kathleen Kenyon & the Jewry Wall – Mathew Morris
19th November – Moving in the Shadows – A film remembering Leicester’s 1960s’ Creative Scene
10th December – members evening