Southwold Museum & Historical Society

With the exception of last year, for at least 50 years a feature of the town's calendar has been the summer lectures for the Southwold Museum and Historical Society.

With the exception of last year, for at least 50 years a feature of the town's calendar has been the summer lectures for the Southwold Museum and Historical Society.

This year these August series have been held in the Methodist Church Hall and have attracted near capacity audiences, and organised by a member of the society, Ann Fuller.

The programme began with Bill Ungless and Piers Ford-Crush showing a DVD they had produced on the life and work of arts and crafts architect Frank Jennings (1875-1961) who designed a number of houses in Walberswick. This was followed by questions. This talk at short notice replaced the programmed one, due to the intended speaker having been hospitalised.

The second lecture attracted considerable interest being a programme of slides and notes of one of the talks regularly given in the past by the late A Barrett Jenkins, local historian, who served the town council for many years including periods as mayor and alderman. Many of the slides were from photographs taken by his father Frederick Jenkins who set up as a photographer in Southwold in 1901. He also had served on the council and as mayor.

Huby Fairhead, the curator of the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum at Flixton, Bungay, gave an illustrated and intriguing talk entitled, 'Did the eagle land?' - a look at enemy subterfuge during world war two in Norfolk.

The series ended with local conservation architect, Alan Greening, giving the history of the making of glass, its variety and usage, and concluding with a selection of stained glass church windows from medieval times to the 20th century.