Food glorious food: LAMAS 59th Local History Conference

Date/Time
Date(s) - Saturday 15 November 2025
10:30 am - 5:30 pm

Location
London Museum Docklands

Categories No Categories


A man, glass in hand, sits at a table with food and drink. Wood-engraving, late 16th century. Drinking of alcoholic beverages. Alcoholism. Alcoholics. Drinking glasses. Drinking vessels. Tableware. Bowls (Tableware). Food. Dinners and dining. Costume – History (- 16th century). Work ID: b542sgv4.Our Vice-Chair, Simon Fowler, is one of the speakers at a Local History Conference on the theme of food in London history on Saturday 15 November at London Museum Docklands. 

The conference is organised by LAMAS, the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society. There will be talks on:

  • The Alimentary Question”: Food, Imagined Community, and the Experience of Civilian Internment in First World War London (Christopher Batten)
  • “Home and Hominy”: the American Red Cross clubs in London during the Second World War (Simon Fowler)
  • Keynote Lecture: London soup kitchens 1795-1914: feeding the poor of the nineteenth century metropolis (Dr Phil Carstairs)
  • “There is no such thing as scarcity”: Food, the docks and the revolutionary politics of the East London Federation of Suffragettes (Dr Katherine Connelly)
  • Orange sellers on the streets of London (Malcolm Thick)
  • Food for thought: The use of Subtleties in Medieval Banquets (Dr Vanessa King)
  • Lord Cranfield’s 1621 Sugar Christening “Bankett” (Stephen Draper)

Local history displays and stalls by LAMAS-affiliated societies  (including the Richmond Local History Society)  will be available to browse before and during breaks in the conference.

The LAMAS Publications Awards for 2024 will be presented at the Conference. For four successive years, our own society has won first place in the Journal category of the LAMAS Pubications Awards. As we didn’t produce a journal last year, we haven’t submitted an entry in that category, but we have put forward the new edition of Kew at War 1939-1945 in the Publications category,

The conference can be attended in-person or via Zoom. Tickets are available at https://www.lamas.org.uk/product/lamas-59th-local-history-conference/