And now for something completely different - some maritime industrial archaeology.

Today's speaker Geoff has been a railway enthusiast since his schooldays.  At 15, he left school and started his career as an engine cleaner, working in the boilersmith’s shop and eventually becoming a top-link fireman based at Guildford Motive Power Depot. This gave him a privileged opportunity to work with a diverse group of drivers and locomotives until the final day of steam on the Southern Region, Sunday 9th July 1967.

The work women of the Land Army in World War 2 is well known.  This talk tells the story of the less well-known women who volunteered in the 1940s to keep traffic flowing on Britain’s canals. However they may have referred to themselves, they were far form “idle women”.

Doors 13:30, talk starts at 14:00. Duration c90 mins including a tea & coffee break

The world’s first underground public railway opened in 1863, running  between Paddington and Farringdon Street in London.

Chris will explain why it was necessary, how it was built, and how it expanded right across our capital city.

The First World War inspired Heath Robinson to dream up a series of increasingly outlandish and bizarre military inventions with which the opposing armies would try to outwit each other. From the kaiser’s campaigning car or a suggestion for an armoured bayonet curler, to post-war ‘unbullying’ of beef, his cartoons are a fantastically absurd take on wartime technology and home-front life.

Organised by Simon Ritchie.

Leatherhead Institute, Saturday 26th October 2024

Play about the man behind the iconic London Tube map. Could meet in the cafe there an hour or so before. And there's the excellent LT museum as well, of course. 

Ashtead Pottery was an enterprise giving work to disabled war veterans from the Great War, and to "assist in the reconstruction of rural life".  It only lasted 12 years but produced some very individualistic pottery, often in art Deco styles, which now commands impressive prices; their most famous produce was the 1924 Empire Exhibition's "Empire Lions" souvenir.  Come along and hear much, much more from Professor Anne Andersen.

Zoom talk by Benedict O'Looney, an architect and active member of the Victorian Society.