October 15th – College of Arms with Bluemantle Pursuivant

Join the Young Georgians on October 15th for an exclusive, after-hours visit to His Majesty’s College of Arms, where we will be hosted by James Peill, F.S.A. (Bluemantle Pursuivant and ex YG Chair) for an evening of heraldic discovery.

Arriving at 6:15 PM for a 6:30 PM start, guests will enjoy an expert talk on the evolution of heraldry, the College’s unique architecture, and the daily inner workings of its ancient practices. In this special Vanbrugh300 anniversary year, we will pay particular tribute to Sir John Vanbrugh’s tenure as a herald, exploring archival links to the famed architect before heading into the Record Room for a rare viewing of manuscripts dating back to the 15th Century.

The evening concludes with drinks and conversation at 8:15 PM, providing a chance to mingle and ask questions before we depart at 9:00 PM.

Places are limited to 20 people.

Across the visual arts in France and Britain in the 1820s and 1830s a dynamic culture of fashion was taking shape. Wide-ranging in taste and driven by a quest for the new, fashion flourished in the period’s expansive print production, while the fine arts negotiated demands for novelty more paradoxically, partly by reviving styles from the past. Following the publication of her new book, Susan L. Siegfried will argue that the intersections between fashion, costume, and art in these pivotal decades embody the fractured conditions of early nineteenth-century modernity.

The talk starts at 6.30pm.

Georgian Group members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering GGMEMBER at the checkout.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list

Half-day | £45

Set in the heart of rural Cambridgeshire, Kimbolton Castle was first built as a fortified manor house, and later modified during the Tudor and Stuart periods. It was the home of the Earl and Dukes of Manchester for over three hundred years.

The Castle in its present form dates almost entirely to between 1690 and 1720, when it was remodelled in two stages by Charles Edward Montagu, the fourth Earl. The first stage was undertaken by Henry Bell with Sir John Vanbrugh responsible for the second. In 1764 Robert Adam designed the gatehouse to blend with Vanbrugh’s masculine style. In 1950 the Castle was bought by Kimbolton School whose home it has been ever since. Andrew Bamford, Castle Curator, will lead an exclusive tour of this rarely open Vanbrugh masterpiece.

The event is for Georgian Group members’ only. Please read our terms and conditions before booking. 

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

Photo Credit: Kimbolton Castle

Patrick Baty will explain how one can learn what paint colours were used during this period. The treatment of panelled rooms – in particular, the disposition of colour – will be discussed, with examples of how many modern decorators misunderstand this and produce nonsensical results. The ‘Good Taste Brigade’ would have one believe that all early paints were ‘chalky’. This is far from true and the advantages of a finish with a sheen will be explained.

During the 18th century ready-mixed paint colours were sold by the colourman and Patrick will outline those being offered. The prices charged for various colours will be given and, it will be seen, that there was a distinct hierarchy based on cost.

Patrick will then outline the conventions behind the use of colour in certain parts of the house with examples taken from recent restoration. projects. Patrick will show some examples of quite unusual decorative schemes that he has uncovered and also indicate that there are occasions where a ‘pure’ approach to redecoration might be disregarded.

The talk starts at 6.30pm.

Georgian Group members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering GGMEMBER at the checkout.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list

Join us for an exclusive evening at the former residence of Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father of the United States, in this the 250th anniversary of his foundation. The Grade I listed building functioned as a de facto embassy during Franklin’s almost-16-years in residence and retains a majority of its original features, from the floors and panelling to the staircase and, it is believed, the doorknocker!

We will have sole use of the house and will be led on a tour of the building and through the artefacts, including a glass armonica. Drinks will be provided, and we will go from Franklin’s House to the nearby Ship and Shovell pub, purportedly frequented by Franklin.

£35pp

Image: Portrait of Benjamin Franklin, David Martin (1767) via Fine Art America

PLEASE NOTE: THE DATE OF THIS TALK HAS BEEN CHANGED TO THE 16TH NOVEMBER

Painted interiors, narratives spilling over walls and ceilings, can unlock the sensory worlds of the British Isles in the 17th century. Murals of this period served to educate, persuade and entertain, conveying messages on politics, virtue and morality in modes that were both tragic and comic. Architectural spaces were transformed into Olympian realms, Biblical settings, imagined landscapes or estates.

Whilst there are hundreds of examples of Baroque mural paintings across the British Isles, only a fraction of them are intact today. They include the extensive painted interiors of Chatsworth House, Derbyshire; Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi’s ceiling and Louis Laguerre’s walls at Marlborough House, London; and Antonio Verrio’s enfilade at Burghley House, Lincolnshire, among many others. Following the publication of her new book, Lydia Hamlett will explore how these paintings were designed to appeal to our emotions through the five senses, and reframes the British Baroque interior as an active, imaginative space.

The talk starts at 6.30pm.

Georgian Group members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering GGMEMBER at the checkout.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list

Photo Credit: Michael Bailie

Vanbrugh has long been a source of inspiration for architects of very different persuasions. Among the most significant in the context of twentieth-century architecture were Alison and Peter Smithson and Robert Venturi. Although close in age, the Smithsons and Venturi advanced what are conventionally seen as diametrically opposing architectural philosophies in Postmodernism and Brutalism respectively, though both shied away from these respective monikers.

Where Brutalism constituted a doubling down on modernist tenets via its structural honesty, extreme truth to materials and, as was especially the case in the Smithsons’ work, progressive social programmes, Postmodernism embraced, to use Venturi’s characterisation, complexity and contradiction, rejecting modernist abstraction and embracing historical styles and aesthetics of the everyday.

Owen Hopkins will reconstruct what attracted such seemingly diverging architects to Vanbrugh’s architecture, how they saw it – and the different ways it shaped their own work.

The talk starts at 6.30pm.

Georgian Group members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering GGMEMBER at the checkout.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list

Photo Credit: 20th Century Architecture

£15 members/£18 non-members

Please note that the date of this talk has changed to the 8th December

2026 marks the bicentenary of University College London – 200 years since it was founded as London’s first university, and the first in the country to open its doors to all, irrespective of religious belief. This lecture tells the story of its first architectural expression: the domed Greek Revival building of 1827–9 designed by William Wilkins which, then as now, stood as a symbol of the institution’s democratic principles. The talk considers (among other things) the progressive philosophy – social and educational, as well as architectural – that lay behind Wilkins’s design; the terrible damage sustained during bombing raids in 1940–1; and the building’s subsequent restoration by the arch-neoclassicist Sir Albert Richardson, one of the founders of the Georgian Group

The talk starts at 6.30pm, doors open from 6.15pm.

Georgian Group members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering GGMEMBER at the checkout.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list

Photo Credit: UCL Media Services – University College London