Detail of the planned talks are below. All will be at St Mary’s Centre starting at 8pm.
This is another wonderfully varied programme, with plenty for us all to enjoy – and learn from!
12 November 2026 – Trevor Baker, ‘Miles of Aisles – the Sainsbury family business from 1869 to 1973′.
In 1869, John James Sainsbury and his wife Mary Ann opened a small dairy shop in Drury Lane, Holborn. Trevor Baker, of Abbots Langley Local History Society, will illustrate the history of the family business through four generations up to its floatation on the London Stock Exchange in 1973.
10 December 2026 – Our ‘Bring and Tell’ – five-minute talks. This remains a real fixture in our season: members, friends and visitors are encouraged to bring along something of significance to them and tell us about it for about five minutes. Rumour has it that minced pies will also be available!
14 January 2027 – Brian D’Olier, ‘A French Huguenot’s flight from persecution and their family’s generational journey, 1667-2027, to Rickmansworth through 6 countries.’
The story begins in 1685 with an 18-year-old fleeing the dragonnards from Montauban, SW France. Generations 2, 3 and 4 were Dublin silversmiths during the Protestant Ascendancy and Penal Laws. Generation 3 was prominent in Dublin society, including High Sheriff during the 1798 Uprising and a founder of the Bank of Ireland etc. Another returned to Montauban in 1791 and was imprisoned by the Revolutionaries. Generations 4 & 5 were involved in the Church of Ireland: the Tithe wars, church building in Canadian ‘backwoods’. Generation 6 encountered the Irish Famine and emigrated to England. Then there was involvement with Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and a mystery portrait. Then disaster.
The story continues to Generation 11; the speaker is Generation 9.
11 February 2027 – John Galloway, ‘An Act of Faith: the building of All Saints Church, Croxley Green, from 1868 to 1908’.
All Saints’ was built between 1868 and 1908 by two of the most prominent architects of the Gothic Revival, John Norton and Temple Lushington Moore. Building 35 years apart, between them, they produced a remarkably interesting idiosyncratic structure, in essence two churches side by side, on two different levels, and with two varieties of the Neo-Gothic ‘pointed’ style, linked by massive Romanesque arches.
John, leading the All Saints Church History Group, will expand the story as told in his book.
11 March 2027 – Fabian Hiscock, ‘A Victorian Farmer – the diaries of John White of Parsonage Farm, Rickmansworth.’ The donation to the Three Rivers Museum of these remarkable diaries, covering with gaps the years from 1846 to 1896, have yielded wonderful detail of local history. The story resulting from the efforts of the museum’s volunteers continues to grow and to provide ever more detail. Fabian will illustrate the local life in the second half of the nineteenth century as captured by a fine detailed record.
8 April 2027 – Neil Hamilton, ‘Oxhey Chapel’. Neil is heavily involved in the presentation of this small jewel of the local story of Oxhey, dating as it does from 1612.
13 May 2027 – Laurie Elvin, ‘Finding Cassio – the early history of the Cassiobury Estate’.
10 June 2027 – our Annual General Meeting, followed by Helen George on ‘The Brocket Babes – a wartime Maternity Hospital’.
Several country houses in Hertfordshire were used during and immediately after the Second World as emergency maternity hospitals for expectant mothers from London. However, none is so renowned as the maternity hospital established at Brocket Hall near Lemsford. This presentation will tell the story of how the hospital at Brocket Hall came to be established and how it fared during its ten years of existence between 1939 and 1949.
Then we’ll take a break until September 2027!
