Evening meetings are held about every six weeks normally at Moulsham Mill, Chelmsford,  where local, national and internationally known speakers are invited to talk to the Group.

        

From time to time the Group arranges visits to buildings not usually open to the public. Experienced members of the Group will guide new members through the building, pointing out key features of the layout, the style and the carpentry. This will be an opportunity to explore, to ask questions and to get some ideas sorted out. Bring along pencil and paper so that you can make sketches to record what you have seen (no artistic talent needed) and, most important a torch. Details of the visit will be published in the Newsletter and announced at a Friday evening meeting.

 

 

 

 

Calender of Events

2012

               

Unless otherwise stated, meetings are held on the first floor at Moulsham Mill, Chelmsford, on a Friday from 7.30 for 8.00pm.  Each year the AGM is held at a different venue of outstanding interest.

 

Friday 13th January

John Schofield   

Archaeology of St Paul’s Cathedral

John, the Cathedral archaeologist, has compiled the first ever comprehensive archaeological report (published by English Heritage, Nov. 2011) on the successive cathedrals at St Paul’s since its foundation in AD 604.  Medieval St Paul’s was the largest building, in area, in medieval Britain and had more European resonances in its architecture than Wren’s building.  It is slowly coming out of the ground in pieces, like a great shipwreck.

 

Friday 2nd March                    

Jo Bispham   

Restoration of ‘Aubyns’, Writtle, a Grade I Historic Building

The project for this Essex medieval house in Writtle used traditional building craft skills and materials whilst complying with current building regulations and the requirement to make the dwelling user friendly and more fit for modern purpose.  

 

Friday 20th April  

Timothy Brittain-Caitlin

The Parson in the Vanguard:

        A Revolution in English Housing?

Plans and specification for new parsonages submitted with mortgage applications to the Queen Anne's Bounty in the early nineteenth century provide a wonderful picture of contemporary house building. Surviving documents in diocesan archives also track the way in which the Gothic Revival grew so fast and so dramatically across the whole of England from the mid 1840s.

 

Friday 25th May

Elphin Watkin   

The VAG Visit to Norway in 2011  

Stave churches, open air museums and other interesting buildings in Norway along with wonderful landscape.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday 2nd June

Day School at Cressing Temple

The Wealden House:

Medieval Homes for Rural Yeomen & Urban Craftsmen

Speakers: Nat Alcock, David Martin, Martin Higgins & John Walker

 

Saturday 30th June at 2.30 for 3.00pm

AGM at Hole Farm, Stansted - Courtesy of Frances &Toby Lyons

 

Evening meeting at Cressing Temple

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Friday 13th July    

The VAG Visit to the East Midlands and Members’ Evening

 

Friday 21st September

Lee Prosser

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1The Staircase: Steps to Understanding Historic Buildings  

Historic staircases can provide clues in dating and assessing the status of houses, as well as being important examples of craftsmanship.  This talk focuses on some recent research into this much neglected subject.

 

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Friday 19th October   

David Harrison  

The Roads and Bridges of Medieval England

Medieval bridges were achievements in design and engineering comparable to the great cathedrals of the period.  They allowed the creation of a new road system significantly different from its Roman predecessor and one which largely survived until the 20th century.

 

Friday 7th December  

Tim Howson

Medieval Church Screens in Suffolk and Essex

This talk will focus on the design, carpentry and carving of church screens rather than the painted decoration for which they are best known.  Close comparison of a large number of screens has made it possible to identify several distinct groups which are likely the products of individual workshops.  Although what survives of screens is often fragmentary, their original form can usually be deduced from the evidence that remains.  The relationship between the design of church screens and the ornament that enriches some contemporary secular buildings will be explored.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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