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St Peter's Street early 20th Century showing the hardware store on the left.

Next meeting of the Duxford History Society will be on Tuesday 13th August 2024 at 7:00 p.m.

This is the article released for the Chatterbox from Blair (full version is on the blog page).

Duxford History Society Update

Today we are celebrating the 100th and 101st member of our highly popular History Society. Members are tuning in to the features that the society offers, like access to all the Church records since 1599, informative discussions on the WhatsApp site and our ever popular as well as educational monthly meetings with exciting and knowledgeable speakers. Our meetings take place alternately in mornings and evenings throughout the year and everyone has the opportunity to attend.

To join the society, simply go to website https://membermojo.co.uk/duxhist and follow the instructions.

A new benefit of being a society member is the opportunity for you and your family to go on one of our popular history outing such as our recent one to historic Saffron Walden with a blue badge guide as described below by Blair Malcolm. Blair is one of our committee members.

In June about 10 members attended an excellent tour of Saffron Walden.

Our guide was Sarah Fitzpatrick, who had given talks at our meetings on Saffron Walden and Audley End House in the past year.

The tour started at the ruins of the early medieval castle, built in the 1140’s by Baron Geoffrey de Mandeville. We went on to view houses on Castle St built in the 1500’s, now painted in a wonderful variety of colours. Sarah, herself had lived in one them for a time. We stopped at the magnificent parish church, St Mary the Virgin, begun in 1250 but rebuilt 1470-1525.  The tour ended on Church St in front of the Old Sun Inn, which is a Grade 1 listed building dating from the 14th century. These buildings are now being carefully restored by Douglas Kent, who will visit our Society to give us an illustrated talk in November.

Our featured speaker last month was Paul Hunt  World War II historian. To illustrate his presentation, he brought a number of original wartime artefacts from his own personal collection. A few of our members could recall being evacuated as children, having to carry a gas mask, using ration books for food and clothing. He showed us examples of the tins used for powdered milk and powdered egg, a bar of Sunlight soap, even a 1940’s hot water bottle. Some of the women were interested in a pair of nylon stockings which were very rare until the Americans arrived in large numbers later in the war. 

Paul finished his presentation by recounting the very moving story of Anne Frank, the Dutch girl, who had hidden in an attic with her family in Amsterdam

but was eventually betrayed and discovered by the SS. 

Our next meeting will take place in the evening of Tuesday 13th August at 7:00 pm and our speaker will be Jim Earle, author and resident of the village and he will be talking on the subject of “Defence of the Realm”. We look forward to seeing you there.

Meetings 2024

Meetings are fun, we start with updates on what has been achieved during the past month and then we have a speaker to tell us about issues of historical interest to all of us. We have a break in the middle when people can mingle and chat and everyone enjoys it.

It isn’t expensive to join and we will only charge £10 per member for the year from Januiary and at the moment it is free. the outlined dates for 2024 are all in the Duxford Community Centre and are as follows:

• Tuesday 13th August 7:00 pm

• Thursday 5th September 10:00 am

• Tuesday 8th October 7:00 pm

• Thursday 7th November 10:00 am

• Tuesday 10th December 7:00 pm

There will be more of this to follow including a list of proposed speakers in the next issue. We are trialling this for the first half year and if you respond well, we will extend it. 

Not a member ? Join now

Even if you can't make all of the meetings you can still be a member and share in everything that is going on by tuning in to our website and participating in our WhatsApp group. WhatsApp allows all of our members to share memories and pictures and new discoveries. Just click the link below:

 Link to:

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol6/pp201-220

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol2/pp223-226

Farringdon Diaries. https://capturingcambridge.org/museum-of-cambridge/museum-exhibit-stories/the-farrington-diaries/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsVTJtA35sA

https://youtu.be/YsLF4_MqEBs

https://duxfordparishcouncil.gov.uk/duxford-history/

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol6/pp201-220

http://www.facebook.com/stjohnsduxford

http://www.instagram.com/duxfordstjohns

http://www.twitter.com/duxfordstjohns