Events

£40 – Members only 

This tour, kindly hosted by Lady Chichester, will provide members with an opportunity to visit a perfectly-formed, grade I-listed house that is rarely open to the public. Built c.1739 for German Pole, probably by William Smith the Younger, it underwent interior restoration by John Fowler in the 1950s and is a particularly good example of his work. In recent years Peregrine Bryant Architects have undertaken a scheme of restoration and repair of the house and we will be fortunate to be joined by Peregrine Bryant and the project architect Adesola Adeyemi on our visit. This afternoon tour will last for a couple of hours.

Members to make their own travel arrangements.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

This event is for Georgian Group members only.

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

(Photo: CJC Photography)

To ensure entry to the event, please purchase a ticket in advance. If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list. We cannot guarantee entry on the night to those who arrive without having booked a ticket in advance.

£18

Wilton House in Salisbury, England, has been the ancestral home of the Earl of Pembroke for nearly 500 years and boasts one of the most fascinating and varied histories of all Britain’s historic houses. Shaped over centuries by the most significant names in architecture and interior design, Wilton is known as the finest example of Palladian architecture in England, with interiors by Inigo Jones, John Webb and Edward Pearce, furniture by William Kent and Thomas Chippendale, and unparalleled collections of both classical sculpture and Old Master paintings with masterpieces by Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, and Tintoretto among its rooms. This talk will explore the development of the house and its collections.

John Martin Robinson an historian and acclaimed author of over thirty books, including studies of the Wyatts and the architecture of country houses. He worked for the Greater London Council Historic Buildings Division from 1974 to 1986 and is a former Vice-Chairman of the Georgian Group. He serves as Maltravers Herald Extraordinary, one of Her Majesty’s Officers of Arms, and is Librarian to the Duke of Norfolk. He has been an architectural writer for Country Life magazine for over forty years, contributing almost 400 articles and reviews. His most recent book, Wilton House: The Art, Architecture and Interiors of One of Britain’s Great Stately Homes, was published earlier this year.

Doors open 6pm, talk starts 6.30pm (inc. wine). All welcome. Please note that this talk will be taking place at 12 Devonshire Street, London, W1G 7AB.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£3 members/£5 non-members

The taste for Chinese luxury goods became firmly established in Britain in the late seventeenth century. Products like porcelain and silk were appreciated not just for their material glamour and visual sophistication, but also through their association with the longevity and stability of Chinese civilisation. By 1750 the British taste for Chinese pictures to use as wall decoration prompted Chinese artisans to begin to produce pictorial wallpaper for the western market.

This talk will chart the development of the different types of Chinese export wallpaper during the second half of the 18th century, using examples from the historic houses in the care of the National Trust and from elsewhere. Emile de Bruijn will show how the Chinese producers used traditional motifs, materials and techniques while at the same time responding to European tastes. He will place Chinese wallpapers in the wider context of what we might now call ‘orientalism’, the creation and perpetuation of a hybrid decorative style fusing Asian and European elements.

Emile de Bruijn works as an assistant curator for the National Trust, focusing on western decorative art and East Asian art. He published the monograph Chinese Wallpaper in Britain and Ireland in 2017 and he is currently working on a book about the impact of China and Japan on the houses and gardens of the National Trust.

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.

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

***This talk will be recorded. The recording will be available to all those who have purchased a ticket for a limited period of time after the event takes place***

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

(Photo © National Trust Images/Chris Lacey) 

£3 members/£5 non-members

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.

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

***This talk will be recorded. The recording will be available to all those who have purchased a ticket for a limited period of time after the event takes place***

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£40 – Members only 

Once described as ‘the Premier house of Essex’, Copped Hall was built in the 1750s by John Sanderson for John Conyers and remodelled internally by James Wyatt in the later eighteenth century. In 1917, the house was gutted by fire and thereafter followed a long period of neglect and decay until the Copped Hall Trust acquired the freehold of the property, ancillary buildings and gardens in 1995 and commenced a scheme of restoration. This tour will provide an opportunity to see how the restoration has progressed since the Group last visited and we are fortunate to have as our guide Alan Cox, Chairman and Architect of the Copped Hall Trust, who will discuss the ongoing restoration and the campaign to save the building. This afternoon tour will last for a few hours and refreshments (tea and cake) will be provided.

Members to make their own travel arrangements.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

This event is for members only.

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

£3 members/£5 non-members

Charles Hope-Weir, second son of the 1st Earl of Hopetoun, embarked on his Grand Tour in 1754 with the architects Robert and James Adam in tow. After some disagreements, Charles parted from his companions and was left to travel across the continent alone. In this talk, Harry Spain will be following Hope-Weir to Italy, taking in the sights he saw, meeting some other travellers he encountered and, most importantly, taking a look at the unusual collection of sheet music that he collected along the way. This collection shines light on the role music played on the Grand Tour, on the acquisitional behaviour of eighteenth-century tourists, and on how the music Hope-Weir heard in Italy might have made its way back to Edinburgh concert halls.

Harry Spain is currently studying Architectural History at the University of Oxford under Dr Steven Parissien. He formerly studied Music and Art History at the University of Manchester, where he specialised in Grand Tour collections, graduating in 2020. Harry now works as Assistant Archivist at Pusey House, Oxford, and is currently cataloguing and researching the House’s collection of letters and drawings by the architect Temple Moore.

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.

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

***This talk will be recorded. The recording will be available to all those who have purchased a ticket for a limited period of time after the event takes place***

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£15 – Young Georgians

Meeting at Winchester train station in the morning, this Young Georgian day trip to Winchester, led by Conor Lynch and Frederick Hervey-Bathurst, will include visits to Winchester College and Wolvesey Palace, followed by a walking tour of key buildings in this historic city, including the Deanery, St Swithun upon Kingsgate, Cheyney Court, Jane Austen’s House and Pilgrim’s Hall. Following this, Young Georgians will depart for tea at a nearby country house (transport provided) before returning to Winchester to catch trains in the evening.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

This event is open to Young Georgians and guests. 

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

£3 members/£5 non-members

Mountain precipices, erupting volcanoes, battles, malaria and the ever-present danger of social failure: travel on the eighteenth-century Grand Tour could be unpleasantly hazardous. In this talk, Sarah Goldsmith will explore why Grand Tourists risked such dangers. Could these perils ever be more than a dangerous nuisance and was the Grand Tour more than its famous association with Italy, arts and classical antiquity?

Dr Sarah Goldsmith is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the Univerity of Edinburgh, specialising in the histories of masculinity, the body and travel. She is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and her first monograph, Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour was published in 2020 with the University of London Press.

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.

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

***This talk will be recorded. The recording will be available to all those who have purchased a ticket for a limited period of time after the event takes place***

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£3 members/£5 non-members

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.

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

***This talk will be recorded. The recording will be available to all those who have purchased a ticket for a limited period of time after the event takes place***

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£3 members/£5 non-members

The Georgian era saw the heyday of England’s spa towns. Catering for an ever-growing demand for commercialised leisure, they encouraged a spate of new building which transformed provincial towns such as Bath and Cheltenham. This talk explains the social background to this transformation, and discusses its effect on urban architecture and planning.

Dr Geoffrey Tyack is a council member of the London Topographical Society, an emeritus fellow of Kellogg College in the University of Oxford, and the editor of the Georgian Group Journal. He is the author of Sir James Pennethorne and the Making of Victorian London (1992) and co-author of John Nash: Architect of the Picturesque(2013). He recently completed a book on the history of the British urban landscape, to be published by the Oxford University Press in 2022.

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.

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

***This talk will be recorded. The recording will be available to all those who have purchased a ticket for a limited period of time after the event takes place***

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£3 members/£5 non-members

The eighteenth century was a beardless age. Whereas in previous centuries facial hair had represented male strength and virility, it was the clean-shaven face that now became an essential part of the neat, elegant appearance of the polite gentleman. As well as visiting barbers, this period also saw increasing numbers of men begin to shave themselves, helped on by new, fashionable types of razors and a whole new market for commercial shaving products. What were barbershops like in this period? How did men learn to shave? And were all Georgian men truly clean-shaven? This talk will explore the world of shaving, barbers and cosmetic shaving products in the eighteenth century, and show how they occupy an important place in the history of masculinity.

Dr Alun Withey is an academic historian of early modern medicine and the body, an AHRC/BBC ‘New Generation Thinker’, and a senior lecturer in History at the University of Exeter. He recently completed a major research project ‘Do Beards Matter?’, funded by a fellowship from the Wellcome Trust, which formed the basis of his new book Concerning Beards: Facial Hair, Health and Practice in England, 1650-1900 (London: Bloomsbury, 2021). His previous research explored the history of medicine in early modern Wales, and he was an associate research fellow on another Wellcome-funded project ‘The Medical World of England, Ireland and Wales, 1550-1715’, also at Exeter. He has previously been a lecturer in history at Swansea University, where he taught a variety of courses on early modern Britain. His other research interests include medical technologies of the eighteenth century, especially razors and shaving and their link to constructions of masculinity and politeness, and the history of the male body more broadly.

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.

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

***This talk will be recorded. The recording will be available to all those who have purchased a ticket for a limited period of time after the event takes place***

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£3 members, £5 non-members

Brighton was a declining seaside town which regenerated as a seaside resort. Four more declining coastal towns also benefited from seaside tourism but Brighton outgrew them and has remained the most important resort of this quintet. We will explore why Brighton was fashionable before the arrival of George, Prince of Wales (whose influence on the resort has been overstated) and then examine the very significant impact of being on the front line during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815). From 1815 Brighton was transformed to such an extent that a visitor who knew it in 1780 would have found much of the townscape unfamiliar. We will look at how this happened.

The talk will be illustrated with some of the rich collection of images of it during this period, a collection that is currently undervalued as a resource for the marketing of the resort’s important surviving buildings to the many people interested in towns with an historic ambience as is clear from the popularity of Bath, Edinburgh and York as well as Lewes, the small town near Brighton.

Sue Berry is a historian who has published many articles on Brighton and Sussex in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A number of her articles have appeared in the Georgian Group Journal. She published Georgian Brighton in 2005 and has also published about the resort’s history in the Sussex Archaeological Collections. Those articles published in the Collections will soon be accessible via the website sussexpast.co.uk/research/library. Sue is happy to email digital copies of those in the Collections to enquirers.

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.

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

***This talk will be recorded. The recording will be available to all those who have purchased a ticket for a limited period of time after the event takes place***

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£3 members, £5 non-members

This talk will explore the fascinating life and scandalous death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, celebrated in her day as the ‘female Byron’ for her poetry. The mysterious circumstances of her death, found with a bottle of Prussic acid in her hand at Cape Coast Castle, West Africa, in 1838, were as enigmatic as the particulars of her life; she was a woman with many secrets, not least three illegitimate children. Following her death she became the subject of a cover up which is only now unravelling and this talk will delve into the mystery of her life, work and death, set against the backdrop of the late Georgian period, that post-Byronic era which marked a ‘strange pause’ between the Romantics and the Victorians.

Lucasta Miller is a writer and literary journalist, who formerly worked as deputy literary editor of The Independent. She has contributed to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and The Economist, as well as publishing and writing on the works of the Bronte sisters. Her biography of Letitia Elizabeth Landon was published in 2019.

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.

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

***This talk will be recorded. The recording will be available to all those who have purchased a ticket for a limited period of time after the event takes place***

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking