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Talks and events
Behind the Scenes Tour at Surrey History Centre
Wednesday 2 September, 2pm to 3.30pm at Surrey History Centre, 130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, GU21 6ND
Join us for a behind the scenes tour of Surrey History Centre.
Explore the foyer artworks The Surrey Tapestry and Surrey in Glass, created with support from the Arts Lottery Fund. Journey through six miles of strongroom shelving and discover how we preserve over 900 years of Surrey's written history. Visit the specialist paper conservation studio and see the work of our archive conservator whilst learning how we're working to make Surrey's archives accessible and relevant to all.
We will also stop by the archaeology finds room to watch volunteers processing discoveries, and enjoy a glimpse of treasures from our collections in the search room at the end of the tour.
- Tickets: £10.
- Please book a place online.
- Spaces are limited to 12 so early booking advised.
- The tour will involve periods of standing. If you require a chair in any of the rooms, please make a note of this when booking so we can accommodate your request. Surrey History Centre is fully wheelchair accessible.
Please note the tour taking place on Wednesday 7 October has now sold out.
The Woking County Secondary Schools: opening up a grammar school education for the children of Woking, 1868-1939. A talk by Dr. Pam Mansell for Surrey History Trust.
Wednesday 30 September 5.30pm to 6.45pm on Zoom
This talk explores how secondary education, and the opportunities it brought with it, was opened up in the new town of Woking. It places the creation of the Woking County Secondary Schools in both their national and local contexts. In 1868, a Royal Commission under the chairmanship of Lord Taunton, identified a ‘large vacant place in the provision for national education’, having found that there were no ‘suitable schools within the reach … of great numbers of the youth of the middle class’. The Commission investigated all the schools ‘classed as grammar schools’ and had its terms of reference extended to include the education of girls as well as boys. The next year, the preamble to the Endowed Schools Act stated that a ‘liberal education’ should be brought ‘within the reach of children of all classes’. The 1902 Balfour Education Act brought a national system of secondary education closer to being achieved, as the local authorities were given the power ‘to raise a sum of money for the building or fitting up of a school’. However, they were only ‘required to consider the educational needs of their areas’. It was civic initiative that led to the opening of Woking County Secondary School for Boys and Technical Institute, in 1914, as local officials had to battle Surrey County Council to get a school that matched its aspirations. Woking County Secondary School for Girls was opened in 1923, during the financially difficult years after World War One. Drawing on a case-study that includes six other schools, this talk will consider how far the Woking experience was typical of the introduction of secondary education in this country.
Dr. Pam Mansell, as Head of History, produced the centenary history for her school: The Girls of Southend High School 1913-2013: A Century for Women. This led to a Royal Holloway PhD thesis exploring the culture and identities of the new state grammar schools, 1868-1939, through a case-study of eight girls’ and boys’ schools.
- Tickets: £6.
- Please book a place online.
- Once payment has been received you will be sent the Zoom joining information shortly, or next working day if booked in the evening/weekend.
- All talks include subtitles, and a copy of the recording will be sent to registered attendees the following day to download and keep.
Surrey Emigration and Immigration
Saturday 10 October 9.55am to 3.30pm at Surrey History Centre, 130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, GU21 6ND
Surrey Local History Committee (a committee of Surrey Archaeological Society) presents a day of talks:
- 9.30am Registration and coffee/tea
- 9.55am Welcome by Dr. Gerry Moss, Chairman of Surrey Local History Committee
- 10.00am Dr. Judy Hill, Independent Researcher
The Life of the poor and emigration from England in the early nineteenth century: the Petworth and Dorking Emigration Schemes - 10.50am Coffee/tea
- 11.15am Jane Lewis, Independent Researcher
Moving On: Immigration, Emigration & Transportation - 12.00pm Jill Hyams, Surrey Heritage
The Ockenden Venture: Reception and Resettlement of Vietnamese Refugees in the UK - 12.30pm Lunch (coffee/tea available)
- 1.30pm Susannah Horn, Dorking Museum
Dorking’s Connection with the Mayflower - 2.15pm Jeremy Hodgkinson, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Independent Researcher
The Wealden Iron Industry and its Links with France - 3.00pm Trevor Brook
Munich and the Czech Refugees in Surrey. As Hitler took over the Sudetenland in 1938, Social Democrats, trade unionists and Jews fled for their lives. 150 lived in Albury - 3.45pm Discussion and Close
Coffee or tea are included. Please make your own arrangements for lunch. It is recommended to bring a packed lunch as there are few cafes near Surrey History Centre.
- Tickets: £18 booked in advance. Tickets on the day will be £20 payable in cash only.
- Please book a place online.
Exhibitions and displays
Woking in Wells' Time
Tuesday 4 August to Wednesday 30 September at Surrey History Centre, 130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, GU21 6ND
Display marking the 160th anniversary of Herbert George (HG) Wells’ birth and the 80th anniversary of his death. Combining the rich resources of Surrey History Centre and The Lightbox, this display provides a fascinating glimpse of what Woking would have been like during the time HG Wells lived here.
This Side of the Looking Glass: Archives from the Real Life of Lewis Carroll
Thursday 1 October to Thursday 26 November at Surrey History Centre, 130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, GU21 6ND
This special exhibition returns for 2026, featuring additional artefacts from Lewis Carroll expert and collector extraordinaire Edward Wakeling. Originally created to mark the 160th anniversary of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 2025, it celebrates the life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll.
Carroll has a special connection to the county. Guildford became the town most closely associated with Carroll’s adult life outside Oxford. From 1868, his sisters lived at The Chestnuts on Castle Hill, where Carroll spent many Christmases. During his visits, he took photographs, participated in amateur plays, and enjoyed long walks, even finding inspiration for the final line of The Hunting of the Snark. While usually on holiday during his stays, he also completed Alice Through the Looking Glass in Guildford and occasionally preached at St Mary’s Church.
Over the last 75 years, archives relating to Carroll’s childhood, letters and his original photographs of his brothers, sisters and aunt have been placed in the care of Surrey History Centre. These provide important evidence of his private life.
Curator of the exhibition and Archivist at Surrey History Centre, Isabel Sullivan, explains: “This Side of the Looking Glass: Archives from the Real Life of Lewis Carroll, explores Carroll in his own time - his family and childhood, his avid letter-writing habit, and the Victorian age in which he lived, with its wonders of technology, including the new art of photography. We are delighted to display for the first time treasured objects and artistic creations we now hold on loan from the Dodgson family, alongside his original photographs, and letters from Carroll himself and among others Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria’s young granddaughter Princess Alice. Exhibits from the Dodgson family, the Manners Collection and West Horsley Place Trust are also included.”
The exhibition runs throughout October and November 2025 in the Centre’s foyer and display cabinets. Admission is free, and visitors are welcome during opening hours (normal searchroom admission rules apply).
If you’re unable to visit in person, an online talk recording explaining more about the items on show can be purchased from the list of online talks below.
Recorded talks to purchase
If you missed one of our online talks, why not purchase the talk recording to view in your own time?
The talks available are:
- A Burden on the Parish: sources for the history of Poor Relief in Surrey
- A 'Great' amongst Victorian Architects? Royal Holloway's W H Crossland
- A Snark Celebration: celebrating the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll's poem 'The Hunting of the Snark'
- Aladdin's Cave: Some Major Family and Estate Archives in Surrey History Centre
- Artists, Antiquaries and Collectors: illustrations of Georgian Surrey collected by Robert Barclay of Bury Hill, Dorking, circa.1800 to 1825
- Bananas: How a Surrey Garden Played a Pivotal Role in the History of the World's Favourite Fruit
- Beginning your Family History
- Behind the Scenes in Conservation - Arsenic and Old Lace
- Behind the Scenes in Conservation - repairing posters, maps and plans
- Behind the Scenes in Conservation - Tithe Maps
- Bombs, Aircraft, Doodlebugs and More; They All Fell on Surrey
- Corsets and Cameras
- Celebrating R C Sherriff
- Fashion and Folly
- From Patient to Professor
- From Punishment to Pride: LGBTQ+ archives at Surrey History Centre
- Gertrude Jekyll, Gardener and Craftswoman
- In the Shadow of the Great War: Surrey 1914 to 1918
- James Henry Pullen (1835 to 1916) and the Royal Earlswood Asylum for Idiots, Redhill
- John Evelyn in Surrey
- Land of my Father's Fathers: Tracing your Welsh Ancestors
- Let the Road Rise to Meet You: Tracing Your Irish Ancestors
- Life and Labour in a County Village - or learn to love your Ag Labs!
- Magna Carta, Runnymede and all that
- Maps for Family Historians
- 'Michael Field' in Reigate: Queer Women Writers and Surrey in the 1890s
- Netherne circa 1955: A Surrey Psychiatric Hospital in Focus
- Oliver House: The story of a 16th century cottage
- Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Sources for the History of Surrey's Mental Hospitals, 1700 to circa.1990
- Picturing the Patient: Photography in Surrey Hospitals, 1850-1960
- Planting Ideas: Sources for the History of Gardening in Surrey.
- Portrait of a Surrey Town between the Wars: the photographic archive of Sidney Francis
- Reflections on the Lewis Carroll archives, on the 150th anniversary of 'Alice through the Looking Glass'
- Researching in Archives
- Richard III: A Drama in Three Acts
- Schools of Thought: Education Records for Family Historians
- Sir William More of Loseley
- Surrey Writers
- Terror from the sky: mapping air raids on Surrey in World War Two
- The afterlives of executed bodies from Kennington Common
- The Book That Changed My Life
- The Changing Face of Nursing: Black Nurses in Surrey Hospitals
- The Gentleman's Magazine: A Panorama of Georgian Surrey for Family and Local Historians
- The Most Wretched Man in the World: The Life and Loves of the 5th Viscount Midleton
- The Princess Mary Village Homes in the Twentieth Century
- The Portable Antiquities Scheme in Surrey
- This Side of the Looking Glass: Archives from the Real Life of Lewis Carroll
- To the Manor Born: An Introduction to Manorial Records for Family Historians
- Virtual Tour Behind the Scenes at Surrey History Centre
- What did you do after the war, Grandad? – 1918 to 1925: de-mob, jobs, pensions, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the British Legion
- Where There's a Will
- Who Do You Think They Were? Discovering the lives and experiences of our ancestors
Most talk descriptions can be found on our Talks and Tours page. Each talk consists of a 45 minute to an hour illustrated presentation followed by questions asked during the live talk. You can also email us with any questions you may have after the talk and we will pass them on to the speaker to answer. Price £6. To purchase a recording please visit the Surrey Heritage Shop. Please note talks may contain references to historical legal terminology, sexual practices and crimes, used in the historical context but which some viewers may find offensive.
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