During the pandemic, we are replacing our programme of lectures in Oxford with a series of lectures given via Zoom, to be viewed each month by our members in their own home.
On Tuesday 16 March at 11am: our presentation via Zoom will be Cliveden: Passion, Pleasure and Politics outlining the history of Cliveden, from the Duke of Buckingham in the 17th century to the Astors in the 20th century. Ray Isted, a volunteer speaker from the Cliveden Talks Service, will lead us on a journey from devilish dukes to scandalous headlines, and from boundary-breaking garden design to political notoriety.
On Tuesday, 20 April at 11am: our Zoom lecture will be Ham House, the finest 17C house in Europe to be given by Roseanne Williams, a member of the National Trust Monitoring Group, a keen volunteer for many years, and a former member of Council. It is the story of how a father and daughter, William and Elizabeth Murray, developed Ham with wonderful interior treatments and furnishings. Roseanne includes some relevant Stuart history and finishes by describing the interesting story of how it came into the hands of the NT.
From Monday 17th until Sunday 23rd May the Zoom lecture will be Jewish Country Houses, Collections and National Memory, a joint presentation by Abigail Green, Professor of Modern European History, University of Oxford, and Tom Stammers, Associate Professor in Modern European History, University of Durham. Abigail is working with the National Trust on a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship at Oxford helping to reveal shared Jewish histories across NT properties. She writes: “The country houses of the Jewish elite that were once ubiquitous across Europe have largely faded from national memory. What do these houses and the extraordinary art collections that once embellished them tell us about the changing place of Jews and Jewishness in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries?”
From Monday 14th to Sunday 20th June, the presentation on Reroofing The Vyne by George Roberts, National Trust Curator of The Vyne, will be available via a Zoom link for members. Following damage from a severe storm in 2013, The Vyne’s entire roof needed to be repaired. In September 2018, this former Tudor palace, visited by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, reopened after a 2-year £5.4m roof conservation project which used 41 miles of scaffolding and involved rebuilding several Tudor chimneys.
