Meetings & Programmes
Under normal circumstances, the Friends hold ten meetings a year when the guest speaker usually covers a local history subject. The meetings are on the third Thursday evening of most months in the Archaeology Gallery at the Museum in Market Place, Basingstoke. The doors are opened between 7.10 and 7.30 with the meeting commencing at 7.35.
There is a short break after the talk when tea and coffee are usually available for a nominal amount and there is the opportunity to take part in our raffle for attractive prizes.
Nearby car parking costs £2.40 for the evening after 7pm.
Admission is FREE for Members. Once again a limited number of Guests can attend the meetings. Guests will have to pre-book by phoning the Museum on 01256 465902 (daytime) at least twenty four hours in advance.
A small admission charge of £5.00 per person is payable at the door. This £5.00 can be used towards a full membership fee of just £15.00 for the year if you join the Friends on the night. This ensures that you will have a seat at all future meetings without the need to pre-book.
Next Meeting
Friends of the Willis Museum Talks Programme
2026-2027
July 16th - David Wiggins
The impact of weapons technology on combat injuries forced the evolution of military medicine technology. Such changes occurred over the centuries, but it was during the English Civil War when Oliver Cromwell with the Model Army repurposed a building to create the Savoy Hospital in 1642.
He had realised that the previous system of camp followers tending to the wounded no longer suited with firearms causing different wounds. The real improvements emerged with the recognition that many combatants survived their initial surgery but died due to general conditions and disease.
David takes us from the early history of army medicine through to the present day.
September 17th - Nicola Turton
Local historian Nicola Turton inspired by the time she spent researching the Tudor ruins of Basing House tells the story of Joan Larke who “married” Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal, and Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII, using the ancient, informal “Handfasting” ceremony and what is known about Joan’s life together with many revelations about life in late medieval England.
October 15th
Annual General Meeting
A.G.M – Followed by ‘Victorian Refreshments’
November 19th - Chelsey Lewington
Thomas Burberry
This year we have a special reason to remember Thomas Burberry another local figure whose name is known world-wide: it is that he died a century ago on April 4th April 1926 and buried in Basingstoke.
Thomas Burberry established Burberry in Basingstoke, England at just 21 years old. The company was founded on the principle that clothing should be designed to protect people from the British weather. From early beginnings to an international business.
January 21st 2027 - David Wickens
Bramley Hidden Railway from WW1
A railway of the First World War that subsequently played a critical role in the Second World War and would ultimately survive, largely unaltered and still in everyday use, until the late 1980s. Shrouded in official secrecy for most of its operational life, very little has previously been known about the Bramley Military Railway.
It is now approaching 50 years since CAD Bramley closed and nearly 40 years since the site was last used as an ammunition depot with an operational railway.
February 11th - Ruth Kerr
Hampshire supporting farming through the ages
From travelling magic lantern lectures to currently helping new people get a foot on the farm ladder with their 30+ tenant farms, Hampshire County Council has been supporting farming and industry improvements for 130 years. This talk sheds light on the history of Hampshire’s Farm School, the creation of council farms, and more.
April 15th - Tim Craven
The Romantic Thread in British Art. (and the Southampton Art Gallery refurbishment)
Tim Craven will consider how and why British artists are innately drawn to a romantic sensibility, what that might be, and that this trait has consistently re-emerged throughout art history in different guises after repeatedly going out of fashion.
Tim will also discuss the refurbishment of the Southampton Art Gallery in that reopened to the public in March 2026 having been closed for just over a year to complete a £2.23 million refurbishment. Tim is Chair of the Friends of Southampton’s Museums, Archives and Galleries and worked at Southampton City Art Gallery for 37 years in conservation, collection management and as Curator. Tim is also a trustee of BAFM
May 20th - Professor Catherine Clark [meeting time - 7pm]
A History of England in 25 Poems: Hampshire Stories
Catherine Clarke’s new book A History of England in 25 Poems (Penguin Allen Lane, 2025) tells the history of England through twenty-five poems written between the eighth century and today – each one opening a portal into a moment in this country’s past. In this talk, Catherine will explore some of the Hampshire and Solent stories in her book, taking us from William the Conqueror’s New Forest, to the poet Edward Thomas convalescing at home near Petersfield (where he composed ‘Adlestrop’), to Queen Victoria at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight – and even a nod to Basingstoke in the Civil War.
Catherine Clarke is a Professor at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, where she is also Director of the Victoria County History of England. She was previously Professor of English Literature at the University of Southampton, where she remains a Visiting Professor. A History of England in 25 Poems has been a Book of the Year in The Times, FT and History Extra, and was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.
June 17th - Dr Ian Goodhall
Five Pioneering Women
This highly illustrated talk gives short biographies of five amazing women, Marie Curie, Dorothy Hodgkin, Rosalind Franklin, Rachel Carson and Lyn Margulis. As well has highlighting their discoveries, I explain how they had to work extra hard to gain recognition, because they were women. Franklin was denied credit, even though she took the crucial photograph which enabled Watson and Crick to work out the structure of DNA. Lyn Margulis struggled for over a decade to get her ideas taken seriously; now her theory of endosymbiosis is accepted as fact. Marie Curie is the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two different sciences and ended up dying from the radiation she had been exposed to in her work. Her recipe books still have to be kept in a lead-lined box! Rachel Carson lit the fuse of the Environment Movement. Hodgkin is the only British woman to win the Nobel Prize.