The activities for this year’s Heritage Open Days organised by the Society in the Corsham area were again well attended.
Negley’s walkers set out
On Thursday 11 September, two parties of ten visited David Pollard’s ‘Stone Quarrying Museum’ at Potley and were fascinated by the wide range of equipment used in quarrying that David has accumulated over the years. He has a wide knowledge of the industry, and the groups were fascinated with everything he had to show them. The largest piece of equipment, as seen in the photograph, is the Samson stone-cutting machine.
The next day, Friday 12 September, a group of ten people visited the Gardiner Houlgate auction house on the Leafield Industrial Estate. A guided tour of the two floors, led by the two directors, enabled everyone to view items ready for the auction due to take place the following week. Gardiner Houlgate is the largest auction house for musical instruments in Europe and probably in the world. The photograph shows the wide range of musical instruments and associated equipment due to be sold. On the same day, Dr. Negley Harte led a group of people on a Historical Town walk starting out by the Parish Church and ending at the Pound Arts Centre. That evening 65–70 people attended the illustrated talk on ‘Corsham in the 20th Century’ given by yours truly.
Inside the musical instruments section of Gardiner Houlgate
On the Saturday afternoon, Dr. Harte conducted a second town walk, which was also well attended. Meanwhile, in the Pound Arts Centre there was an exhibition of paintings by local art groups entitled ‘Corsham in Colour’.
On behalf of the Society, may I take this opportunity of thanking Joan Maciver, Jean Beech and Margaret Shewring for helping me in organising this year’s HODs events. Also our thanks go to Martin Campbell at the Pound Arts Centre for printing all the tickets and to our friends at the Corsham Information and Heritage Centre for distributing them; and finally to Fiona Cassidy for organising the hanging of the pictures for the exhibition at the Pound.
Michael Rumsey