Residential weekend and AGM 25 to 27 January 2008

As usual the annual weekend at Wedgwood Memorial College, Barlaston, Stoke on Trent, was thoroughly enjoyable as well as being informative. Some excellent and unusual presentations, based on individual private research raised some serious questions but Society members also managed some hearty eating and a visit to the local pub in the evening.

Have a look at some of the photographs from the weekend.

The weekend theme was 'Law and Order' and the subjects ranged from the law surrounding the seventeenth century iron industry, to a thought-provoking presentation entitled 'Whose Law? Whose Order?'. A fascinating talk on the legal proceedings surrounding WW1 military executions was followed by a heated debate on the relevance of twenty first century pardons for these early twentieth century 'crimes'.

We also paid a visit to Stafford Record Office where the County Archivist described some of the records held in the County that related to our theme. We were able to look closely at many of the documents which included early Court and Police records, individual photographs of nineteenth century prisoners in Stafford jail and papers relating to famous local murders.

Naturally presentations engendered a great deal of chat over the comfort food and quite a few bottles of inexpensive Chateau Wedgwood were consumed. Society Chair Don Vincent was convinced that his Saturday night quiz was dead easy but few of us managed to get more than 50% correct answers. Maybe this was because many of the questions were geographical rather historical! We can't be brilliant in every subject sir!

The Society will be returning to Wedgwood Memorial College in late January 2009 when the theme of the weekend will be 'Historical Change'. We hope to introduce one or two workshops and give an opportunity, in a shorter paper/presentation session, to those who have never taken part before. More details on this site later in the year. All members will also be notified by post.

There will be 'Conference' edition of Open History published later in the year.

NB If you want to see some of the Staffordshire archives that we viewed spend a few minutes looking at the website www.staffordshire.gov.uk/archives , click Stafford Records Office ,Exhibitions, 'Crime and Punishment'. This is an excellent audio-visual presentation of some of the items in the archives and sets out to appeal to those who might not usually visit a record office. Even those with only a passing interest in history will be interested in the photographs of the items and the background stories.