Heritage Open Days in Nottinghamshire, 7-9 September 2017

Details of all 114 of this year's events and venues in Nottinghamshire are now available on the Heritage Open Days website. There are a very wide range of attractions open from a 'behind the scenes' tour of the Manuscripts & Special Collections department at Nottingham University to Mr Straw's house in Worksop.

'The Welbeck Atlas' has recently been published by the Thoroton Society

The Welbeck Atlas: William Senior’s maps of the estates of William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, 1629-1640, edited by Stephanos Mastoris with an interactive digital flashcard edited by Andrew Nicholson, is the latest volume in the Thoroton Society Record Series.

Over the previous twenty years Senior had undertaken a similar survey for Newcastle’s Cavendish cousins - the 1st and 2nd Earls of Devonshire - of Hardwick and Chatsworth in Derbyshire. For both branches of the family Senior produced outstanding examples of vividly coloured maps bound into folio ‘atlases’.William Cavendish, Earl (later Duke) of Newcastle, of Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire and Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire, was one of the largest English landowners of his day. In 1629 he appointed the surveyor William Senior to map his extensive estates in seven counties.

The Welbeck Atlas contains maps surveyed between 1629 and 1640 for Newcastle’s properties in Nottinghamshire (19 maps), Derbyshire (27), Staffordshire (9), Northumberland (20), Gloucestershire (3) and Somerset (3). Together these cover over 106,000 acres of land and provide an important primary source for local historians and archaeologists of the counties involved as well as for genealogists and cartographic historians.


This ground-breaking Record Series edition incorporates two elements. Firstly this book contains a detailed Map Catalogue listing the names of all villages, fields and commons recorded on each map as well as the names of their tenants. This is prefaced by a scholarly introduction by the editor, Stephanos Mastoris, illustrated by over sixty colour plates of details from the maps.

Please see the Ordering Thoroton Society publications page for information on purchasing Record Series volumes. Secondly, a digital set of full colour reproductions of the maps is provided on an interactive USB flashcard at the end of the volume. All images are capable of being enlarged on screen to any desired scale.

Festival of Archaeology 2017 in Nottinghamshire

A wide range of activities and attractions in the county are available this weekend as part of the national Festival of Archaeology 2017.

They range from graveyard recording at St Helena's Church in Thoroton to an illustrated talk on the history of  knitting industry in the East Midlands.

Further details can be found on the Festival of Archaeology website.

Events at St Martin's church, Bilborough, during June 2017

Latest edition of the Transactions of the Thoroton Society published

The latest edition of the Transactions of the Thoroton Society has been published. Ordering information is available on the Thoroton Society website.

Table of contents:

• Archaeology in Nottinghamshire 2016 by Chris King
• The Portable Antiquities Scheme in Nottinghamshire 2016 by Alastair Willis (with contributions by Richard Davies)
• The Newark Iron Age Torc by Rachel Atherton (kindly supported by the Vernon Radcliffe bequest)
• The use of gypsum plaster and lime-ash for flooring in medieval east Midlands: evidence from Bingham, Nottinghamshire by Peter Allen and Anthony Cooper
• Landscape surveys at Kelham, Nottinghamshire by Matthew Beresford
• 'By floating and watering such land as lieth capable thereof: recovering meadow irrigation in Nottinghamshire by Jonathan Hillman and Hadrian Cook
• The Northward Expansion of the Boundary of Sherwood Forest in the Sixteenth Century by David Crook
• The dating of the completion of the composition of the Memoirs of Colonel John Hutchinson: the evidence of the imprisonments of Captain John Wright and Lieutenant Richard Franck, by P.R. Seddon
• Victorian Gardening, Horticulture and Arboriculture in the Midlands: John Frederick Wood (1806-1865) of Nottingham and the Midland Florist and Suburban Horticulturist by Christine Drew and Paul Elliott
• Mapping the Robin Hood Rifles in Mid-Nineteenth Century Nottingham by Lucie Sutherland
• The Nottingham Exhibition of 1903-1904: An amusement Park by Keith Fisher
• Nursing the wounded in the First World War: the Nottinghamshire VAD hospitals, by Jill Oakland
• The Scientific Community in Nottingham: Bromley House to the University College by John Beckett

Archaeology talks at St Martin's church, Bilborough, in May 2017

Posters for two archaeology talks at St Martin's church in Bilborough this month:

Talk on the social and political context of the Pentrich Rising, 13 May 2017

BBC Radio Nottingham Big Day Out 2017

BBC Radio Nottingham's Big Day Out is on Sunday 30 April 2017 and is offering FREE entry to Nottinghamshire museums and heritage attractions.

Full details are on the BBC Radio Nottingham website.

Heart of Nottingham Heritage Action Zone

Central Nottingham is among the first wave of Heritage Action Zones announced by Historic England. According to Historic England:

'The objectives of the HAZ are to use the historic environment of Nottingham to reveal the city's history and in turn secure its future conservation. We'll achieve this through various means from research and listing, through to innovative conservation area management and grant assistance.'

Further information is available on the Historic England website.

Coal mining in the Leen Valley: talk by Dr David Amos, 12 April 2017

The History Festival 2017, 5-7 April at Nottingham University

Nottingham University's first History Festival will take place across various locations and all the events are free. Activities include:

• behind the scenes at Manuscripts and Special Collection
• lecture by Dr Nick Barratt of BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? fame
• find out about the history and heritage of University Park Campus
• walk in the footsteps of the Nottingham 1831 Rioters
• find out more about the history of Nottingham’s Green Spaces and the
  First World War in Nottinghamshire
• step back into the past with living history and reenactment displays

Full details are available in the History Festival Flier.

The Great Nottinghamshire Local History Fair, 7 May 2017

Sneinton Pride of Place Project, 4-18 March 2017