Events

£18

Like many well-to-do Georgian families, the Atkinson family’s wealth was acquired at a terrible cost, through the labour and lives of enslaved Africans. Drawing on his ancestors’ extensive private correspondence, as well as public archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Richard Atkinson has spent ten years piecing together their unsettling story, from the weather-beaten house in Cumbria where they once lived to the ruins of their sugar estates in Jamaica – exposing many dark secrets along the way.

Richard Atkinson is a book publisher who is responsible, among other things, for some of the most successful cookbooks of recent years. Coincidentally, it was his discovery of a cookery manuscript written by a Georgian ancestor that set him on the decade-long genealogical odyssey which eventually led to Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract. He lives in London, but holds a deep-rooted affection for the north of England, the land of his ancestors.

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.

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; more tickets may be released at a later date. We cannot guarantee entry on the night to those who arrive without having booked a ticket in advance.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£5 – Young Georgians

Young Georgians are invited to Christmas Drinks at 6 Fitzroy Square on Thursday 9th December from 6.30pm.

Wine and nibbles will be provided.

This invitation is open to both current Young Georgians and potential new YGs so do bring along anyone that might like to join!

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

£5 members/£7 non-members

Seaside resorts began to develop in the early eighteenth century. The most successful ere old coastal towns such as Hastings, Margate and Weymouth where the basics such as lodgings existed, and simply needed the resort facilities added to.  At first, few facilities were developed because investors believed that this fashion might not last, and the season was very short. As sea bathing became more fashionable, so more local people invested in libraries, assembly rooms, baths and other facilities.  These needed several hundred people around all the time during the season to make money. So small communities rarely had anything other than bathing machines, an assembly room, and perhaps a small library.   Attempts to develop everything from scratch often resulted In bankruptcy.   By 1830, most of the successful ones had similar facilities and fashionable terraced housing. Whereas the failures were half built and often remained so unless connected to a large town by the railway.

The larger resorts became centres for social networking – a key influence on their development.  Some of the letters which describe what visitors saw, particularly those by women, highlight human characteristics we see today.  Women commenting on the looks of their peer group, often somewhat cattily, give us an idea of just how important good looks and a good figure were envied.  Cartoons mock some of the diaphanous clothing of the early 1800s. Doctors letters reveal a desire to ensure that clients kept returning, the tone obsequious.  Developers seeking to attract celebrities to boost numbers adopted a similar stance, often simply adding to their debt by offering free housing.

By 1830 the seaside resorts needed a new look. A period of uncertainty which lasted into the 1850s for some, was followed by the development of different facilities and client groups.

Sue Berry FSA has studied resorts for some time, as part of her broader interest in economic and social change between about 1750 and 1850 and its impact. She usually uses Sussex, where she lives for case studies but always sets them within the appropriate national context.  She has published articles, books and chapters in books about the period.

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 (£10 YGs)

This talk will discuss the Four Crowns collection and reflect the major concerns of the project: permanence, mutability, and a dream of antiquity. This will be achieved by exploring the history of scagliola as a craft and how scagliola’s three-dimensional applications are evolving in ways previously unachieved by scagliola craftsmen. To demonstrate the depth of the collection, our talk will shine a light on the subjects that govern the artistic ideals behind Four Crowns. These include: the emblem tradition, the aesthetic value of ruins, the significance of the Grand Tour in contemporary design and the enduring importance of contributing to the classical tradition with new ideas. This talk will appeal to anyone who is interested to learn how famous names such as Piranesi, Clérisseau, Panini and Gandy have influenced artists and craftsmen working in the 21st century.

Launched in late 2019, Four Crowns is a sculpture and design studio which rethinks and recasts ancient motifs for contemporary audiences. The studio works primarily with bronze and scagliola – the ancient method of manipulating plaster and natural pigments to mirror rare, lost or unobtainable marbles. With over 50 years experience in sculpting and stone masonry, combined with an academic background in classics, Four Crowns is exacting craftsmanship working at the highest levels. This is shown throughout our compelling collection of architectural details and inscrutable objects. We sell our work to collectors and designers around the world, and offer consultation on applying classical themes to contemporary design briefs.

This lecture will be given by David Sansom, co-founder and Studio Director of Four Crowns. Since 2019, David has led the development of Four Crowns from an inscrutable art collection into a contemporary design studio that champions the traditional craft of scagliola in interiors, art and academia. Four Crowns’ lead artist will also be present during the lecture and available to answer any audience questions about their work and ideals.

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

Young Georgian members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering YGdiscount 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.

£5 members/£7 non-members

For all their apparent elegance of appearance, the new streets and terraces of Georgian London were, in all but the most elite locations, very densely occupied.

In addition to the occupying household, their servants and apprentices, there were many men and women who lodged in one, two or more rooms the household could spare. Contemporary estimates of the number of lodgers in the capital in Georgian times was around 38,000 people – more than the entire population of Norwich, England’s second city. Some of these lodgers were famous, like Jonathan Swift, Lord Byron or John Keats, others more obscure. This talk looks at the infrastructure of Georgian lodging, how a newcomer to Georgian London found a room, and what life was like in a crowded house shared with strangers who were there to subsidise the landlord’s/lady’s household budget.

Gillian Williamson received her PhD from Birkbeck, University of London in 2014 for her thesis on the 18^th-century Gentleman’s Magazine. She has published on this, on 18^th-century popular politics and most recently on life in Georgian lodgings: Lodgers, Landlords and Landladies in Georgian London (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). She also volunteers with the Georgian Group.  

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

£5 members/£7 non-members

The Georgian era was an innovative period in English literature and saw the emergence of the English novel. Writers such as Henry Fielding (1707-1754), Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) and Jane Austen (1775-1817) were some of the foremost authors of the age and their novels are notable for their robust depictions of characters from varying levels of society. This lecture will look at how and why novelists presented society in differing ways.

Jeremy Black is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Exeter and a Senior Fellow both of Policy Exchange and of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of many books, including A Subject for Taste: Culture in Eighteenth-Century England; George III: America’s Last King; England in the Age of Shakespeare; and Charting the Past: The Historical Worlds of Eighteenth-Century England. Black is a recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History.

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.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£25

Starting at the site of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens of 1785, this guided tour led by Stephen Bull will be visiting some grand squares such as Princes Square, built in the 1760s and now known as Cleaver Square, which leads to the grand Kennington Park Road (c.1783), and will compare the Square to the modest Courtenay Square built in the early twentieth century by the Duchy of Cornwall in a neo-Georgian style.

Part of a series of four walks from Vauxhall to Southwark. London’s South Bank has always been London’s pleasure ground and Stephen Bull, a long-time resident of the area and a repairer of Georgian buildings, will be looking at the Georgian development of the South Bank from Vauxhall to Southwark in a series of walks to enlighten, educate and amuse. The other walks in the series are:

13 April: Kennington to Lambeth North

4 May: Lambeth North to Waterloo

8 June: Waterloo to Southwark

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

This event is for members and their guests.

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

£5 members/£7 non-members

Christopher Joll will explore some of the spoils of war seized by British troops during the Georgian period, many of which are now on display in public collections. He will consider the issue of repatriation as well as bringing to light some fascinating historical facts about those spoils of war held in British collections – along the way debunking a number of myths and legends. 

Christopher Joll was educated at Oxford University and the RMA Sandhurst. He was commissioned into The Life Guards in 1968, leaving seven years later following service that included four tours of duty in Northern Ireland. After a career in the City and industry, in 2005 Christopher’s focus turned to writing books and directing national and royal events for armed services charities. Christopher’s recent books, all published by Nine Elms Books, include The Drum Horse in the Fountain: Tales of the Heroes & Rogues in the Guards; Black Ice: The Memoir of Corie Mapp – soldier, double amputee & world champion; and The Imperial Impresario: The Treasures, Trophies & Trivia of Napoléon’s Theatre of Power. In 2023, Nine Elms Books will publish Christopher’s Fire! The Lost Treasures, Trophies & Trivia of Madame Tussaud & Sons’ Exhibition.

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.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£15 members/£18 non-members

How do historians assess a long and intricate period of history, like that known by the label of Georgian Britain? This talk will approach the question by considering two different sets of evidence. The first is provided by people living at the time; the number of people who exclaimed ‘It is an age of this …’ or ‘a century of that’ was surprisingly large, encouraged by the spread of literacy. Second are the retrospective views, such as that from the Victorian artist who found the entire eighteenth century ‘as dull as a wet Saturday afternoon’. Contrasting these highly varied verdicts shows that there was no consensus, either then or later. Penelope Corfield concludes by offering her own view of the era – and invites others to come and share the debate.

Penelope Corfield is an expert on Georgian urban, social and cultural history; and is currently researching the dynamics of inter-personal greetings in the long eighteenth century. She is Professor Emeritus at Royal Holloway, London University; Research Fellow at Newcastle University; and President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

The talks 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.

£40 (excl. lunch)

Chichester is the archetypal Georgian cathedral city, and local historian and author Alan Green will lead this walking tour around it. The visit begins at the Council Chamber (Roger Morris 1731) and adjoining Assembly Room (James Wyatt 1783) where we will be greeted by the Mayor of Chichester, who will show us the Mayor’s parlour with its fine Georgian furniture. The tour will also take in the Market House (John Nash, 1808) and St John’s Chapel (James Elmes, 1812) and two private houses will be visited. Participants to make their own arrangements for lunch at the many eateries in the town. The visit starts and ends at Chichester railway station.

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.

£40 (excl. lunch)

Although suffering the depredations of the twentieth century, much of Derby’s Georgian heritage still remains and is testament to the prosperity of the city in the eighteenth century, when it was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the Midlands Enlightenment. This day-long tour of Derby, led by Maxwell Craven and Richard Blunt, will take in some of the city’s finest Georgian buildings, including Joseph Pickford’s St Helen’s House (1767), Derby Cathedral with its Robert Bakewell iron work (James Gibbs 1723-25, extended by Sebastian Comper 1968-1971), the Derby Silk Mill (1717-1721 now the Museum of Making), the former Shire Hall (George Eaton 1659-1660) and Judges’ Lodgings (John Welch 1809-1811), and Joseph Pickford’s own House (c.1765) in Friar Gate, a street largely re-developed under two improvement acts of 1768 and 1791. Participants to make their own arrangements for lunch at the many eateries in the city.

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.

£15 members/£18 non-members

The central decades of the eighteenth century in Britain were crucial to the history of European taste and design. One of the period’s most important campaigns of patronage and collecting was that of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland: Sir Hugh Smithson (1712–86) and Lady Elizabeth Seymour Percy (1716–76). This lecture, based on the book Enlightened Eclecticism. The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland (Yale UP, 2021), examines four houses they refurbished in eclectic architectural styles—Stanwick Hall, Northumberland House, Syon House, and Alnwick Castle—alongside the innumerable objects they collected, their funerary monuments, and their persistent engagement in Georgian London’s public sphere. Over the years, the couple’s commissions embraced, or pioneered styles as varied as Palladianism, rococo, neoclassicism, and Gothic revival. Patrons of many artists and architects, they are revealed, particularly, as the greatest supporters of Robert Adam. In every instance, minute details contributed to large-scale projects expressing the Northumberlands’ various aesthetic and cultural allegiances. Their development sheds light on the eclectic taste of Georgian Britain, the emergence of neoclassicism and historicism, and the cultures of the Grand Tour and the Enlightenment.

Adriano Aymonino is Director of Undergraduate Programmes in the Department of History of Art at the University of Buckingham and Programme Director for the MA in the Art Market and the History of Collecting. He has curated several exhibitions, such as Drawn from the Antique: Artists and the Classical Ideal, held at the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London in 2015. His book Enlightened Eclecticism was published by Yale University Press in June 2021. He is currently working on a revised edition of Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny’s Taste and the Antique (2022); and on a critical edition of Robert Adam’s Grand Tour correspondence, which will be hosted on the Sir John Soane’s Museum website (2023). He is also co-editor of the series Paper Worlds published by MIT Press and associate editor of the Journal of the History of Collections.

The talks 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.

£25

Stephen Bull will discuss the ambitions of the Georgian Builders to create a network of streets and squares with the development of Walcot Square (1830) and West Square (1791) with a new ‘state of the art’ semaphore telegraph station constructed in 1810 to form part of a communication network stretching from the Admiralty to Chatham and Sheerness. The tour will also take in the site of Bethlem Royal Hospital (1815) which was also known as Bedlam and is now the home of the Imperial War Museum.

Part of a series of four walks from Vauxhall to Southwark. London’s South Bank has always been London’s pleasure ground and Stephen Bull, a long-time resident of the area and a repairer of Georgian buildings, will be looking at the Georgian development of the South Bank from Vauxhall to Southwark in a series of walks to enlighten, educate and amuse. The other walks in the series are:

2 March: Vauxhall to Kennington

4 May: Lambeth North to Waterloo

8 June: Waterloo to Southwark

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

This event is for members and their guests.

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

£10 – Young Georgians

A brilliant opportunity for Young Georgians to not only hear a talk by one of our leading landscape designers but to also visit two of his works. This event, organised by Frederick Hervey-Bathurst in collaboration with Winchester College, will begin with a talk by Kim Wilkie at 2pm at the College, a short walk from Winchester station.

Kim will then guide the group on a tour of his works at Shawford Park and The Holt Estate.

The landscape surrounding Shawford, a seventeenth-century house set in the base of the Itchen Valley, has been much lauded for its imaginative restoration and scale of vision, involving plantations of 1000 new trees, new rills which intersect the watermeadows, and earthworks which offer marvellous prospects back to the house.

At The Holt, Kim’s amphitheatre responds elegantly to the house and its history and typifies his approach to landscape design, setting the stage for drama of all sorts! We are enormously privileged to have Kim leading our tour but also look forward to hearing from the owners and curators of both landscapes who have generously invited us in.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

This event is open to Young Georgians only. 

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

£25

This walk, led by Stephen Bull, will take in former pastures green owned by the Church and the Crown, and which were once mainly marsh land used mostly for grazing sheep while the better higher ground at Kennington was built upon as the ideal location for the Georgian expansion of London. Stephen will take the tour group to Lower Marsh where William Blake (1757-1827) moved to observe the night’s sky, and it is here that he wrote ‘Jerusalem’ with its pastures green and the dark satanic mill that was the burnt-out shell of the Albion Steam mill (1786-1791) on Blackfriars Road.

Part of a series of four walks from Vauxhall to Southwark. London’s South Bank has always been London’s pleasure ground and Stephen Bull, a long-time resident of the area and a repairer of Georgian buildings, will be looking at the Georgian development of the South Bank from Vauxhall to Southwark in a series of walks to enlighten, educate and amuse. The other walks in the series are:

2 March: Vauxhall to Kennington

13 April: Kennington to Lambeth North

8 June: Waterloo to Southwark

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

This event is for members and their guests.

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

£5 members/£7 non-members

During a period of social and economic upheaval, against the backdrop of the French Revolution and war, what was the contribution of caricaturists to the national debate over political reform?

In this illustrated lecture, Jasper Jennings will explore the impact of satirical cartoons within and outside Westminster. He will consider how they were marketed and consumed, and the artistic legacy of the likes of James Gillray and his contemporaries. How should 21^st century audiences engage with these humorous but often challenging images?

Jasper Jennings has spent over 20 years finding and selling antiquarian prints. With his natural flair for entertaining, combined with working knowledge and robust scholarship, he engages diverse audiences with print culture and art. He joined a shop selling rare prints and books in Covent Garden straight out of university. After a brief spell in a New York gallery, Jasper started dealing himself, exhibiting at international fairs as a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association. He has written on the market in printed collectables for titles such as Historic House and the Antiques Trade Gazette.

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.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking

£5 members/£7 non-members

In 1794, the highly successful physician John Coakley Lettsom published Grove-Hill, An Horticultural Sketch, which acted as a guidebook for visitors to his semi-rural estate in Camberwell on the outskirts of London. This talk will use Lettsom’s landscape as a key example to explore how medical practitioners used their botanical training to capitalize on the growing fashion for botanical collecting and agricultural experimentation in institutional, semi-public, and private gardens across Britain. In turn this will also highlight how medical practitioners were using and experiencing gardens in the late Georgian period. Taking an approach that combines the history of science, medicine and the environment, the garden will be revealed as an important site of knowledge creation and exchange for a rising professional class of medical practitioners.

Clare Hickman is a Senior Lecturer in History at Newcastle University working at the intersection of environmental and medical history. Her recent Wellcome Trust funded Fellowship, ‘The Garden as a Laboratory’, merged the history of medicine, health and science, with that of the landscape and environment and has resulted in a number of articles as well as her latest book, The Doctor’s Garden: Medicine, Science, and Horticulture in Britain (Yale University Press, 2021).

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.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking