If you have family connections with Lydiard Park and the parish of Lydiard Tregoze this is a chance to share your memories and explore The Lydiard Archives with Friends of Lydiard Park Chair Sarah Finch-Crisp and fellow volunteers.
Local historian and writer Frances Bevan in conversation with author Nicola Cornick to celebrate the launch of Frances’s new book ‘The Ladies of Lydiard’.
Horticulturalist and garden historian Margie Hoffnung takes a light-hearted look at the many aspects of gardens through the ages which might tempt people to visit them
Medieval historian Dr Lynda Pidgeon explores the relationship between King Henry VII’s devoted mother Margaret and members of her extended family; a care for her blood relations which sometimes conflicted with concern for her son.
Explore the abandoned State Rooms and servants' quarters with former Keeper of Lydiard House and Park, Sarah Finch-Crisp. Drawing on rare photographs and the words and voices of post war occupants, discover the lost world of a mansion in decay.
Nicola Cornick, archivist for the Romantic Novelists’ Association, discusses the Georgian love story of Frederick St John and Arabella Craven. From the ballrooms of London to piracy on the high seas, Frederick and Arabella’s story encompasses all the adventure, glamour and scandal of the Georgian age.
Conservation Architect Michael Gray explores the radical remodelling of Lydiard House in the 18th Century, the family tensions that accompanied it and how the old medieval manor house can still be traced within the Palladian mansion we know today.
Author Elizabeth St. John travels to Cromwell’s Commonwealth as Anne St.John Wilmot, Lady Rochester, secretly conspires with the Sealed Knot to restore King Charles to England’s throne.
Author Nicola Cornick looks at the life and work of Lady Diana Beauclerk and considers how the time she spent living at Lydiard House influenced her art.
Author Elizabeth St.John brings a new perspective to one of the world’s most famous castles and prisons – The Tower of London and her ancestress Lucy St. John.
An international symposium at Nottingham Castle. Keynote speakers include Friends of Lydiard Park ambassador Elizabeth St. John talking about how Lucy Hutchinson’s royalist family, the St. Johns, impacted her puritan reality.
Stephen Slater, author and fellow of the Heraldry Society of England, reveals a hidden language of fabulous beasts, symbolic animals and corrugated boiler flues!
