The Friends of the Oxfordshire Museum are holding three Saturday talks in addition to their usual monthly talks, to raise money for the Museum. These talks will be held at 3pm in the Coach House at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock, on 18 May, 8 June and 29 June. All 3 talks have the theme of buildings and architecture. Tockets are £6 and are available in advance from The Woodstock Bookshop.
18 May: The Day Parliament Burned Down, Caroline Shenton
Caroline Shenton, Director of the Parliamentary Archives and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Historical Society will talk about her prize-winning book (winner of the Political Book of the year 2013).
In the early evening of 16 October 1834, to the horror of bystanders, a huge
ball of fire exploded through the roof of the Houses of Parliament, creating a
blaze so enormous that it could be seen by the King and Queen at Windsor, and
from stagecoaches on top of the South Downs. In front of hundreds of thousands
of witnesses the great conflagration destroyed Parliament's glorious old
buildings and their contents.
The events of that October day in 1834 were as shocking and significant to
contemporaries as the death of Princess Diana was to us at the end of the 20th
century - yet today this national catastrophe is a forgotten disaster, not least
because Barry and Pugin's monumental new Palace of Westminster has obliterated
all memory of its 800 year-old predecessor. Rumours as to the fire's cause were
rife. Was it arson, terrorism, the work of foreign operatives, a kitchen
accident, careless builders, or even divine judgement on politicians?
The two others talks are:
8 June: Nikolaus Pevsner - The Life, Susie Harris
29 June: Brunelleschi's Dome, Ross King
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