Meetings 2024 - 2025
The society's monthly meetings are held on a Monday evening from September to April in Marple Methodist Church.
Doors open at 7:15pm ready for the meeting to commence at 7:45pm.
Follow this link for more general information about the society's meetings.
Mark Llewellin
First broadcast on December 9th 1960, Coronation Street created by the 24 year old Tony Warren remains a nation’s favourite to this day.
Mark Llewellin, who gave a tour de force on the history of the Pantomime in It’s Behind You! December 2022, returned to take us back to the birth of this ground breaking show. A programme that in the 1960s and 1970s regularly attracted figures of between 18 and 21 million viewers.
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Joanna Williams
Manchester is famed for its support of radical political movements - the Co-operative movement, the Anti-Corn Law League and the Trades Union Congress. But perhaps the movement most closely associated with this city is the fight for women’s suffrage. In 2021 we heard from Andrew Simcock about Emmeline Pankhurst but at our October meeting Joanna Williams introduced us to a lesser known figure who played a very important role in the growth of the suffrage movement - Lydia Becker.
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Brian Groom
After giving us a talk in September 2023 on Northerners, Brian Groom came back for an encore. This time his subject was “Made in Manchester”, which was really something of a misnomer as it was a comprehensive history of Manchester, not just what was made here. Or perhaps I’m wrong. Yes, I am wrong. He was using the word ‘made’ in its widest sense. Not just what items were made in Manchester such as Ford motor cars and Kelloggs Cornflakes but the people who made Manchester and, in turn, were made by Manchester.
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History of the mobile phone - Nigel Linge
Nigel brought us to half-time in the Society season with the story of that device in your pocket, handbag or just by your side. Comedian Ernie Wise was one half of the UK’s hugely popular comedy double act, Morecambe and Wise, and was famous for the “plays what he wrote!” However, on 1st January 1985 Ernie Wise made history by inaugurating the UK’s first mobile telephone network. This therefore was “the call what he made” that signalled the start of our mobile communications revolution which today has resulted in the situation where there are now more mobile phones than people in the country.
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Neil Mullineux
Despite the warning given in this newsletter that the talk was not for the faint-hearted, an impressive 96 people turned up on a cold January evening. Neil was there to relate a dastardly crime that took place almost 200 years ago but what sort of crime was it? Taking a young girl from her school by false pretences, whisking her away to Gretna Green, marrying her under false pretences and then fleeing to France must have broken innumerable laws but when the authorities finally caught up with them they could not even decide if it was a felony or a misdemeanour. Nevertheless, there was no doubt about the motive - the young victim was the richest heiress in Cheshire.
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Kevin Harrison
The tidal wave of the industrial revolution swept though Britain, changing it from an agricultural land to one driven by coal and growing crowded towns. Technological change may have been at the forefront and millions of pounds of capital backing was used as to back ambitious schemes, as well as the odd audacious one. But, more than any other factor, it was physically transformed shovel load by backbreaking shovel load by the navvies.
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Keith Warrender
Deansgate 1988Once upon a time, in a distant past, the River Dene flowed elegantly through Manchester’s Hanging Ditch, creating an essential link between the Irk and Irwell rivers at the northern end of Deansgate, which is one of the city’s oldest streets. During Roman times, in the era of Mamucium, historical records indicate that there was a mansio situated on Deansgate opposite the Hilton Hotel and that Roman structures were present on the eastern side of Deansgate, specifically on the site where the Hilton Hotel now stands. The land on both sides of the road was utilized for farming until urban expansion began to take over, particularly in the 1730s, when Edward Byrom constructed a significant quay on the River Irwell.
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With Hilary Atkinson's 'A Picture Tour of Marple in Days Gone By'
The curtain falls down once more on a season at Marple Methodist Church that spans over eight months and eight meetings, from one year to the next. With evenings of discovery and entertainment on the way. Hilary Atkinson, our ex-chair, brought the season’s proceedings to a close, with aplomb. But first the management of the Society in the shape of an AGM has to take place.
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