Thank you – and a warm welcome
Keith Mulberry, Liz Velluet, Robert Smith and Paul Velluet on the Society’s stand at the Ham Fair. Photo by Juliet Mulberry
Our thanks to everyone who visited our stands at the summer fairs in Richmond, Ham and Kew, a big thank you to the volunteers who helped run them and a warm welcome to the new members who have joined us.
Duchess, Daughter, Socialite, Spy?
Ham House has a display, until October, on Elizabeth Murray, Duchess of Lauderdale. Find out more and read about Elizabeth Murray in our book Ham House and its Owners Through Five Centuries.
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 18 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
We’re 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 running throughout September, which celebrates Richmond upon Thames’ heritage.
Painting plants with a passion
Photos by Mary Pollard
Liz Velluet
From left: Liz Velllouet (Secretary), Robert Smith (Chairman) and Roberta Turner (Treasurer) at our May 2018 AGM
Jack Andrews MBE
Jack Andrews with our Chairman, Robert Smith
More than 100 people attended our AGM in May, which was followed by a talk by Jack Andrews on Marianne North, the Victorian botanical artist. Jack kindly donated to our bookstall some copies of the DVD of his TV documentary about her. If you were unable to buy a DVD, you may like to know that they are now back in stock at Kew Gardens’ bookshop and can also be ordered online at http://shop.kew.org
The 2018 issue of Richmond History is now available, and we’ve updated the free index
Richmond History 39, the 2018 issue of our annual journal, has a new design and features a painting by Ron Berryman, a Society member, on the front cover. Copies are available from The Open Book in King Street, Richmond, the Museum of Richmond, The National Archives’ bookshop, Kew Bookshop, Lloyds of Kew Bookshop and our online bookshop.
Our free index to our annual journal, Richmond History, now includes all issues up to and including no. 39 (2018). You can view the index or download it as a PDF.
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.
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 an article about the freebord’s history. Find out more
300th anniversary of the arrival of Prince George and Princess Caroline in Richmond
Prince George and Princess Caroline (the future George II and Queen Caroline) came to Richmond in 1718 – 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, our website now has 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’re also 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 Museum of Richmond’s 30th anniversary
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 World War I
- in December, Rebecca Arnott on the history of the Museum of Richmond, which first opened 30 years ago
- in January 2019, Stephen Bartlett on Royston House and the building of Victorian Kew
- in February, Steven Woodbridge on the League of Nations Union in Richmond
- in March, Jill Lamb on the oral history project Ham is Where the Heart is
Looking further ahead:
- in November 2019, Andrew Humphries on Richmond’s music scene in the 1960s
Reports of previous talks
Our website now has reports of these talks:
2016
- December: Jason Debney on How the Arcadian View from Richmond Hill Inspired the English Landscape Movement
2017
- January: Paul Davies on Crown Lands in Kew – the Public Record Office and Beyond
- February: Richard Holmes on Pubs and Breweries in Richmond
- March: Steven Woodbridge on Richmond and the Right
- April: Sir David Williams on Ham’s Eccentric Princess, Marie d’Orléans
- October: Simon Fowler on Poverty and Philanthropy in Richmond
2018
- March: Michael Gaunt 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.