We’ll be at the Kew Midsummer Fete this coming Saturday
Keith Mulberry, Liz Velluet, Robert Smith and Paul Velluet on the Society’s stand at the Ham Fair. Photo by Juliet Mulberry
Thank you to everyone who visited us at the Richmond May Fair on 12 May, the Museum of Richmond’s garden party at Trumpeter’s House on 3 June and the Ham Fair on 10 June – and in particular to the volunteers who helped us on our stand.
On Saturday 23 June, we’ll be at the Kew Midsummer Fete (on Kew Green), which is open from 11 am to 6 pm. Our stand is no C38 in Row C, next to Hounslow Animal Rescue. Do pop by and say hello!
Book now for your place on our summer coach outing
Our summer coach outing this year is to Burgley House, near Stamford in Lincolnshire, on Tuesday 3 July. Find out more
The Richmond Society’s heritage walks
Our President, Paul Velluet, led a fascinating heritage walk on 23 May for The Richmond Society, looking at exemplary 1970s social housing in Queens Road estate and the 1930s/1960s housing in this splendid garden at Courtlands. His next walk is on Wednesday 4 July.
Our talks programme resumes in September
The staff of Mates Shop in George Street, Richmond when it opened in October 1971. Photo from Richmond Local Studies Library and Archive
In a break from tradition we will be starting our new season of talks one month earlier than before. On Monday 17 September, Simon Fowler will lead a discussion on Richmond in the 1970s,with an opportunity for you to share your memories. This event is part of the Know Your Place festival celebrating the heritage of Richmond upon Thames.
NEW The 2018 issue of our redesigned journal, Richmond History, is now available
Richmond History 39, the 2018 issue of our annual journal, has a smart new design and features a painting by one of our members, Ron Berryman, on the front cover. Copies are available from the Open Bookshop in King Street, Richmond, from the Museum of Richmond, and from our online bookshop.
Great benefits when you join us!
Members receive three newsletters a year, are admitted free to our scheduled talks in 2018, and can buy most of our publications at a discount. See a sample newsletter and find out more about membership.
NEW Oh deer, another Richmond Park myth…
It is sometimes suggested that the “deer leap” or “freebord“, the strip of land immediately outside Richmond Park’s wall, was designed so that if a deer managed to escape its hunters and get beyond the deer leap, it was then free from capture. That’s unlikely, says Richmond Park historian Robert Wood, in a piece on our website about the freebord’s history. Find out more
NEW 300th anniversary of the arrival of Prince George and Princess Caroline in Richmond
2018 is the 300th anniversary of the arrival of Prince George and Princess Caroline (the future George II and Queen Caroline) in Richmond – the first step in a sequence of events that would lead to, among other things, the creation of Kew Gardens.
Stephen Duck
To commemorate this event, we have published, on this website, a poem by Stephen Duck who, after Queen Caroline’s death, took holy orders and was for a while a preacher at St Anne’s Church in Kew. Duck’s poem, “On Richmond Park and Royal Gardens”, annotated by Ron McEwen, a volunteer guide at Kew Gardens, concerns the two royal estates in Richmond – Richmond Park and the grounds of Richmond Lodge (Old Deer Park). Read more
We will also be marking the arrival of the Hanoverians in Richmond and Kew with a talk, in October, by Susanne Groom, former curator at Historic Royal Palaces. Find out more
Coming up: VAD nurses and the history of the Museum of Richmond
See our calendar of forthcoming events and our list of forthcoming talks
Our forthcoming talks include:
A Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse in the First World War
- in November, John Drewry on Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurses in the First World War
- in December, Rebecca Arnott on the history of the Museum of Richmond, which first opened 30 years ago
Our 2019 talks programme
We have already filled some of the slots on our 2019 talks programme:
- in January 2019, Stephen Bartlett will talk about Royston House and the building of Victorian Kew
- in February, Steven Woodbridge will tell us about the League of Nations Union in Richmond
- in March, Jill Lamb will speak about the oral history project Ham is Where the Heart is
- in November, Andrew Humphries will tell us about Richmond’s music scene in the 1960s
Reports of previous talks
Our website now has reports of:
- Jason Debney’s talk in December 2016 on How the Arcadian View from Richmond Hill Inspired the English Landscape Movement
- Paul Davies’ talk in January 2017 on Crown Lands in Kew – the Public Record Office and Beyond
- Richard Holmes’ talk in February 2017 on Pubs and Breweries in Richmond
- Steven Woodbridge’s talk in March 2017 on Richmond and the Right
- Sir David Williams’ talk in April 2017 on Ham’s Eccentric Princess, Marie d’Orléans (1865-1909)
- Simon Fowler’s talk in October 2017 on Poverty and Philanthropy in Richmond
- Michael Gaunt’s talk in March 2018 on Edmund Kean, Shakespearean actor and Richmond theatre manager
Women in leadership roles at the Vineyard Church
Elsie Chamberlain, the Vineyard Congregational Church’s first female minister
On our Resources pages, Peter Flower, archivist at the Vineyard Church in Richmond, tells us about the history of women in leadership roles in our local Congregational Church. Find out more
You can also find a timeline on Richmond Park and read about the Selwyn family and the development of Richmond. And, to complement John Govett’s piece on Richmond’s Old Burial Ground, we’ve added Stephen Orr’s timeline on Vineyard Passage Burial Ground.