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Talks and events
Surrey Artists
Saturday 9 May, 9.30am to 3.30pm at Surrey History Centre, 130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, GU21 6ND
Surrey Local History Committee presents a day of talks:
9.30am Registration and coffee/tea
9.55am Welcome by Dr. Gerry Moss, Chairman of Surrey Local History Committee
10am Hilary Underwood, Curatorial Advisor, Watts Gallery - Nineteenth Century Artists and the Surrey Hills
10.50am Coffee/tea
11.15am Mary Alexander, Independent Researcher - The Russell family of Guildford and polite society
12pm Janet Balchin, Local Historian - England's Vermeer. Leonard Campbell Taylor
12.45pm Lunch (coffee/tea available)
1.45pm Annabel Watts, Head Gardener at Munstead Wood and a researcher of Allingham - The Life and Art of Helen Allingham R.W.S.
2.30pm Mary Broughton, Chair of the Sime Gallery Charitable Incorporated Organisation Trust - Sidney H Sime - Master of Fantasy
3.15pm Discussion and Closing remarks
3.30pm Close
- Tickets booked in advance are £18. Tickets on the day will be £20 payable in cash only.
- Please book a place online.
- 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.
- It is advisable to book early as places are limited.
- Surrey Local History Committee is a committee of Surrey Archaeological Society.
Stand and Deliver! Highwaymen Tales - Free Drop-in Family Activities
Tuesday 26 to Thursday 28 May, 9.30am to 5pm at Surrey History Centre, 130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, GU21 6ND
At Home in History – reflections on writing the history of domestic life. A talk by Jane Hamlett, Professor of Modern British History at Royal Holloway College, University of London
Wednesday 10 June, 5.30pm to 6.45pm on Zoom
The homes we live in have a powerful influence – shaping our behaviour, relationships and values. In this talk Professor Jane Hamlett will explore how the home has become an important category for understanding the past, drawing on her own research on the domestic lives of women, men, children and animals in 19th-century Britain. We will explore the homes of the rich and poor and the many people who lived in institutional spaces in this era including Surrey's Royal Holloway College, the Holloway Sanatorium and Brookwood County Asylum. House history is now increasingly popular with our customers at Surrey History Centre and reflecting on this growing interest, Jane will ask 'What can histories of home tell us, and why are they important today'?
- Tickets: £6.
- Please book a place online.
- Once payment has been received you will be sent the Zoom joining information after 18th May.
- Subtitles included. A recording will be sent the following day for you to download and keep.
- This is the rescheduled date for the talk originally planned for December.
Surrey WW2 Bomb Map Launch
Saturday 13 June, 10.30am to 4.15pm at Surrey History Centre, 130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, GU21 6ND
Did you know Surrey experienced over 3,000 bombing incidents and 275 aircraft crashes in World War Two?
Join us for the launch of the Surrey World War Two Bomb Map — a unique chance to uncover the stories behind the explosions that shaped our county. Explore a live interactive bomb map, discover archive material in our exhibition, and enjoy an expert talk revealing how these events affected local communities. Step back in time. See Surrey’s wartime history come to life.
Doors open at 10:30am, with a talk from 11:00am to 12:00pm (sold out). The same talk will then be repeated again at 1.30pm to 2.30pm (spaces available). After the talk, the remaining time is yours to explore the map and view the exhibition at your leisure.
- Tickets: free, booking essential
- Please book a place online.
Behind the Scenes Tour at Surrey History Centre
Wednesday 17 June, 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.
- This tour has now sold out. If you would like to be added to a waiting list and be the first to hear about future tours, please email us.
- 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.
Exhibitions and displays
Free Arts and Heritage Exhibition “What Keeps Us Well?”
Tuesday 14 April to Thursday 28 May at Surrey History Centre, 130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, GU21 6ND
We are delighted to announce that the "What Keeps Us Well?" exhibition will be opening at Surrey History Centre this month. It will run from Tuesday 14th April until Thursday 28th May 2026, and is free to visit. It’s a creative health project from It's Not Your Birthday But (INYBB), a Surrey-based not-for-profit, in partnership with Surrey History Centre, funded by the Heritage Fund. The project has worked with three local community groups to explore the archives at Surrey History Centre and consider how people have maintained wellbeing over nine centuries through food, exercise, and connection.
This free exhibition will celebrate the project, showcase the archives that inspired it and share the work created in response to it. It will invite visitors to take a seat at our table and consider what nourishes them. As well as platforming the work of local partners halow, the Surrey Gypsy Traveller Communities Forum and Surrey Youth Groups, the exhibition will also showcase the winning visual arts and written entries to the project’s Open Call, which received 400 entries from all over the world.
Two lines from the 1921 poem "Shalford" by A.F. Freeman: "Woven into the days of stress, the golden threads of thankfulness" inspired artists and writers to consider historical wellbeing alongside their own self-care today. A selection of the entries will be exhibited for everyone to enjoy.
For more information and to book an artist-led workshop for your community group as part of your visit, please email hello@itsnotyourbirthdaybut.com
Civil Defence
Tuesday 2 June to Thursday 25 June at Surrey History Centre, 130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, GU21 6ND
Discover how Surrey’s civilians supported their communities during the Second World War in this new display at Surrey History Centre. Drawing on a wide range of archival records, it highlights the vital roles played by local people in Civil Defence, including Air Raid Precautions and fire wardens, the Home Guard, Women’s Voluntary Service, evacuation efforts and the Women’s Land Army. Featuring newly identified material and volunteer research, the display brings to life the names and contributions of those on Surrey’s home front.
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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