Meetings and Talks

Programme of Talks 2025/2026

Meetings are held in the Lifford Memorial Hall, Lower Green, Broadway WR12 7BU and start at 7pm (doors open at 6:35pm). There is limited parking behind the Hall.
Annual Membership: £10 (includes FREE entry to the season’s nine talks)
Non-Members: £5 per talk (cash on the door please)

Monday 15 September 2025
The Milestone Ground Excavations
speaker: Jamie Wilkins (Site Officer, Worcestershire Archaeology)
The Worcestershire Archeology team share with us a special update on progress of the dig being held at Milestone Ground. This talk follows the highly popular and well attended 2024 Open Days at the site and Robin Jackson’s subsequent talk to BHS in January 2025. 

Monday 20 October 2025
The Broadway Oral History Project
speaker: Julia Letts 
Following a highly successful project with the Gordon Russell Design Museum to capture the voices of former employees, Julia is now assisting in a project to capture the personal stories and experiences of villagers as part of the development of a wider local oral archive. 

Monday 17 November 2025
The House of Sandys, Broadway and other Fragments from the Ombersley Court Archive
speaker: Martin Davis
Martin tells the story of the barony of Sandys of Ombersley, the building, its collections, and of the extended family and its connections to Broadway over a 400-year period.

Monday 8 December 2025
Kiftsgate Court Gardens
speaker: Anne Chambers
Anne tells the story of the magnificent gardens at Kiftsgate, created, maintained and further developed through the dedication of three generations of women gardeners, Heather Muir, Diany Binney and now Anne herself. 

Monday 19 January 2026
Broadway Photographs 1880 – 1910
speaker: Tom Morris
Tom shares with us his extensive collection of historic photographs of the village taken by his grandfather, John Morris. Tom’s father Oliver John Morris was an early forming member of the Broadway Trust and, as a Trustee himself, Tom shares his fathers keen interest in the environment and protecting and enhancing the visual attractiveness of the village.

Monday 16 February 2026
Broadway as a Thoroughfare and Inland Resort (1000 years of Broadway History, pt II)
speaker: Julian Hunt
Historian Julian Hunt returns, following his highly popular “part 1” talk in 2025, with more fascinating detail about the village, its people and history through the centuries.  

Monday 16 March 2026
Musicians of the Broadway Colony 1880-1910
speaker: Malcolm Rogers
Art Historian and former Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Malcolm Rogers now resides in Broadway at Russell House.  Broadway is famed for the artists, writers and musicians, who visited and worked in the village in the late 19th century. Malcolm’s previous talks on the artists colony have been amongst the highlights of the BHS calendar and tonight his illustrated talk will focus on the musicians that visited and lived in the village during this highly creative era.    

Monday 20 April 2026
James Lees-Milne: the Man who Saved England
speaker: Christopher Hotten
Born in 1908 at nearby Wickhamford Manor, James Lees-Milne was a writer and expert on country houses, who worked for the National Trust from 1936 to 1973. Christopher’s talk will tell us more of how Lees-Milne was instrumental in the first large-scale transfer of country houses from private ownership to the National Trust, without which many of these popular and cherished places would have been lost for ever.

Monday 18 May 2026: AGM, followed by
Snowshill Manor speaker: Michael Yardley
Snowshill is the unusual home of Charles Paget Wade, who delighted in creating a stage for his life and passions. Wade’s upbringing with his grandmother and his education in art and architecture certainly influenced his eccentric life, reflected in Snowshill Manor and Garden. Michael will tell us more about the history of the Manor and its unconventional owner.