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!
10 September 2026 – Colin Richards, ‘Aerial Thrills and Spills at Northolt Airport’.
Colin opened our season last year by telling us about the Denham Film Studios, and we’re delighted to welcome him back.
Established in 1915, RAF Northolt is the oldest continuously active RAF station. It played an important role in the early days of British aviation. In WW1, Northolt was a hive of experimental and training activity. In the 1920s it briefly served as one London’s civil airports. In WW2, it was home to several Polish fighter squadrons, notably No. 303 Squadron, whose skill and bravery played a pivotal part in the Battle of Britain. Post-war, until Heathrow was fully open, it was again a centre for civil aviation. Today it is part military airbase, part commercial airfield.
8 October 2026 – Doug Stuckey, ‘HS2 Archaeology’.
As part of the HS2 construction project the route was surveyed for historic evidence, followed by excavations and studies at selected sites. This presentation will cover six excavation sites between Denham and Wendover in the Chiltern section of the route. The excavations were undertaken by professional archaeologists employed by Fusion JV on behalf of HS2, and Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society, of which Doug Stuckey is a member and author, was invited to view several of the excavations while they were ongoing.
Finds and structures discovered range from Mesolithic through to late Saxon, demonstrating a very ‘lived in’ landscape. The post excavation analysis and documentation stages are still ongoing.
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, ‘Ford Madox Brown and the mystery of a multiple figured portrait.’
Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893) collaborated with William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. In 1848 he obtained the commission for the murals for Britain’s industrial capital; in Manchester’s new Town Hall in 1878. He also left a mystery behind that only became evident in 1920. This continuing mystery concerns several aspects: the identity of the sitters, when the painting was executed, where it is set and who commissioned one of his major multiple portrait paintings. The speaker will explore the various past attempts at solving this mystery and show how he believes he might have all the answers!!
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!
Rickmansworth Historical Society 