On 16th September Norman Pagett presents From Field to Plate.

This is the history of the development of food and farming from pre-history to the present day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On 20th May 2026 Doug Newlyn presented A History of Forensic Science.

Doug explained how various techiques were developed and gave examples of how they were used to solve crimes. The techniques included some that were of limited use.

The lesser known subjects were

• anthropometry, identifying criminals by head shapes, and 
• Bertillonage, measuring limbs and head circumference.

The better known subjects were

• fingerprinting, used to identify the murderers the Stratton brothers in 1905
• toxicology, the science of detecting poisons, including the suspected poisoning of former president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko
• ballistics, explaining the murder of PC Gutteridge in 1927
• DNA analysis

 

On 15th April 2026 researcher and author, Norman Pagett, presented a talk which covered how the Shropshire landscape was formed over the past 4 billion years.

This in turn led on to the formation of iron, other minerals and coal which were the basic elements on which the iron maufacturing started. 

The industrial revolution was born and flourished. Manufacturing of ceramics and other industries developed.

Norman explained how transport links, with roads (mainly Roman in origin), and the canal network, enabled goods to be delivered to the rest of the country and to othere countries, via ports such as Liverpool

Norman gave the appreciative audience plenty to think about and discuss.

 

On 18th March 2026, Peter Ward presented a talk called Strawberries a Grower's Journey.

Peter was a soft fruit grower in Donnington for 50 years.

He explained that he was an innovator in growing strawberries in Shropshire, had the first and very successful "pick your own" farm.

Being in Shropshire meant that he could fill a production gap between the early strawberries from Kent and the later fruit from Scotland.

With the help of a Kent growers collective, Peter became a supplier for the most demanding supermakets such as M&S and Tesco.

Peter not only looked over his life but showed the audience how the industry is changing with James Dysons massive automated glasshouse production.

 

We present sessions on a variety of subjects. Recent topics include:

History

Life in the Country 200-300 Years Ago.

The Enigma Machine and Codes

The Ancient Ways that Paved our Future (How our Paths, Tracks, and Roads Came to Be).

Thomas Telford in Shropshire

The Price of Plenty (Early Man, Fire, Tools, Stone Axes, Survival, then profligate use of Resources?);

How the Iron Men of Shropshire Put the World to Work

‘The Norman Conquest’.

 

International History

The History of the Problems in the Middle East.

'Operation Veritable' Feb-March 1945. The Road to the Rhine and Victory

 

Science

The Joys of AI?

The Science of Climate Change

Mendeleev, the Periodic Table and how atoms work

The Fibonacci Sequence

UFOs and Ball Lightning

General Interest

The Tao Te Ching,

Brewing By Traditional Methods.

The UK Oil and Gas Industry (including the Piper Disaster).

 

Biology and Agriculture

The Plant Age.

'Cyclic Events' (the interaction of the Rock Cycle, Hydrological Cycle, and the Nitrogen Cycle.

The interconnection of things in nature and the way trees communicate.

Organic Soils, their Care and Management.

The Dutch Farming Crisis - Enlightened Governance or Totalitarian Overreach?

Regenerative Farming

Farm Management Philosophy at Patshull