Village Life : Lectures

Kemerton Lectures started life after the war as adult education classes.  These days we’re run independently (with no homework or marking!) and meet as a friendly group on Thursday evenings in the Village Hall in autumn and spring.  The speaker for the term will give a series of illustrated talks on a theme, which may be as varied as local history, canals, art history (eg illuminated manuscripts; Tudor portraiture), poets inspired by the landscape, the development of surnames and placenames, or the Wars of the Roses. 

We begin at 7.30 pm and charge £5 per evening.  You are welcome to come for a whole course, or just drop in to individual talks.  We find time for a coffee break, which offers the chance to put questions to the lecturer or chat to friends.

For further details please contact Sue Bennett (rpandsbennett@gmail.com; 01386 725 245).

Spring 2024

Thursday evenings at 7.30 pm: 11th, 18th and 25th January; 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th  February; 7th and 14th March 2024.

Venue: Kemerton Village Hall

Admission: £5

Dr Gillian White will be returning, and taking up the story of the early Plantagenets, looking at the monarchs of England, from Stephen in the twelfth century to Edward II in the fourteenth.  She promises that there will be tales of civil war, of family squabbles, of reforms that shaped the nation’s future, of murders, of crusades, of revolting barons (including Simon de Montfort) and of great works of art and architecture.

11 January (Week 1): Anarchy

We’ll start with the reign of King Stephen, sometimes described as the nineteen years’ Anarchy. It saw a battle for the throne between Stephen and his kinswoman, the Empress Matilda, both grandchildren of William the Conqueror. Civil war gripped the land and ‘there was nothing but disturbance and wickedness and robbery’. What lay behind this war? Was King Stephen really that bad? And who would win this conflict over England?

18 January (Week 2): Henry II and Thomas Beckett

Into this chaos strode Matilda’s son, the teenage Henry of Anjou, first of the Plantagenet monarchs. We’ll spend two weeks with him. as we discover his actions to secure power on both sides of the channel and his fight to control his wayward family. This week we’ll look at his actions to secure the throne, and his relationship with Thomas Becket, as well as spending a little time exploring the artworks associated with Becket’s subsequent cult.

25 January (Week 3): The Devil’s Brood – Henry II and his troublesome family

This week we look in more detail at Henry’s tumultuous family life and his relationship with France and the French king.  We’ll meet his extraordinary wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman of great ability and wealth, who was in turn queen of France and then of England, and learn about their unruly children, who threatened to tear apart their father’s achievements.

1 February (Week 4): Richard I

Cruel absentee king or warrior hero? Richard the Lionheart divides historical opinion. This was a king of England who reigned for ten years and spent barely six months in his own kingdom. We’ll follow his story through revolt, war, conquest, crusade and capture. How will we judge a man whom history has called ‘a bad son, a bad husband, and a bad king, but a gallant and splendid soldier’?

8 February (Week 5): John Lackland

John Lackland gained a kingdom and lost an empire. During his reign, the Angevin Empire of his father, Henry II, was broken up and the Crown that benefitted was that of Capetian France. The king’s actions also led to an effective war with the Church, the Pope excommunicating John and placing the whole of England under an interdict that closed the churches and withdrew all benefits of faith and the sacraments from the people. How did John make such a mess of things at home and abroad? And was Magna Carta a real stand for English liberties or a power grab by the barons?

15 and 22 February (Weeks 6 and 7): Henry III – ‘vir simplex’

John’s son Henry came to the throne as a child of nine at a time of war between the Crown and the barons, a struggle for power that would continue for decades and include the longest castle siege in English history. This is the story of a weak king, subject to the influence of powerful factions, who nevertheless survived to rule for more than fifty years. As we chart his political successes and failures at home and abroad, we will also discover a man of genuine piety, who revered St. Edward the Confessor and rebuilt Westminster Abbey to be a suitable setting for the royal saint’s cult and for the coronations and burials of English royalty. (Oh, and he owned an elephant!)

29 February (Week 8): Edward Longshanks and the Conquest of Wales

7 March (Week 9): Edward 1 – Hammer of the Scots

Henry III’s son, Edward Longshanks, restored the power of Plantagenet kingship and his reign, in which the country’s laws, finances and parliament were stabilised, has been seen as one of the greatest in English history. For contemporaries, he was an ideal king: a man of faith, a man of action and a sound administrator, whose personal presence and charisma gave authority to his throne. But how should we now feel about Edward I’s wars with Wales and with Scotland? Great castles! But also great brutality.

14 March (Week 10): Edward II

Our story ends with Edward of Caernarfon, the fourteenth and youngest child of Edward I’s first marriage. This is a story of factions and rivalry, of military defeat, and of a king ousted by a coup led by his own wife and her lover. For a while, Plantagenet power wobbles.