History lectures in Canterbury

Having spent part of last week at the Fifteenth Century conference at Durham, which was an interesting and pleasurable experience, it might be worth mentioning that the 2026 conference next September will take place at the University of Kent. Dr David Rundle will be the lead organiser at the university, and I’ll be assisting him. Once there are more details, I’ll pass them on through the blog, but we are still at an early stage.

An event, or more accurately a weekend of events earlier in 2026 is more advanced in terms of planning in that the Medieval Canterbury Weekend 2026 will similarly take place at the University of Kent and will be from Friday 1 May to Sunday 3 May. It will use a similar format to previous years of a single talk on the Friday evening going through to the mid/late Sunday afternoon. We have a great schedule of expert speakers, some are firm favourites from previous years while others are coming for the first time, including Helen Castor, Marc Morris, Joanna Laynesmith, David Carpenter, Rachel Koopmans, Chris Dyer, Imogen Corrigan, and Robert Gallagher. Please do save the dates and there will be more information next month.

For this month, as I said a fortnight ago, I’m delighted that the Michael Nightingale Memorial Lecture will be held in the Templeman Library Lecture Theatre at the University of Kent on Tuesday 23^rd September. The lecture will start at 7pm preceded from 6.30pm by a wine reception and Karen Brayshaw, in Special Collections, will provide a small display to accompany the lecture. Please note car parking is free at the university during the evening. This is a joint event provided by CAMEMS with MEMS at Kent and Brook Rural Museum and we are delighted that the Lord Mayor of Canterbury will be attending the lecture. The lecture will be given by Victoria Stevens (West Dean College) and she will seek to identify where significance in heritage lies and demonstrate the opportunities for this to be explored and maintained through conservation and preservation interventions. Victoria will use a series of case studies, based primarily on her specialist area of written heritage, to demonstrate that meaning can lie beyond the overt or apparent object and be held in evidence of human interaction, including what we have previously seen as damage. She will investigate the way that the changes an object has undergone in production, use or subsequent storage can impact the way heritage objects are interpreted and understood, and the added value and holistic view this can provide. Finally, her lecture will seek to highlight some of the analytical techniques that are available to conservators to gain this information without invasive treatment. This promises to be a fascinating lecture, so please do come along – it is free and booking is not required. For more information, please see the previous blog.

In point of fact the next two weeks look to be very busy, but I’ll save news of these events until the second blog in September. Instead, Steve O’Hanlon’s engaging and interesting CHAS lecture last night on the colourful career of Peter de Dene, who spent the later part of his life as a ‘quasi monk’ at St Augustine’s Abbey in the early/mid 14^th century, reminded me of another individual who had a somewhat fraught relationship with the institution in which he resided.

William Baldock was a brother at St Bartholomew’s hospital in Sandwich in the early 16^th century, although exactly when he joined the community there is unknown. What is clearer is that his move into the hospital did not mark the end of his business dealings outside St Bartholomew’s, even though he presumably did, at times, join his fellow brothers and sisters for services in the hospital’s chapel and contributed at least something to the daily running of the hospital. For notwithstanding such communal activities, he was seemingly trading on his own account in bay salt in 1521, which led to a dispute with a local man, Baldock having apparently stored his salt at Cole’s house. The mayor and jurats found in Baldock’s favour but it does suggest his confrontational nature, an idea reinforced by incidents which occurred five years later. At that time the master at St Bartholomew’s with several of the brethren came before the town court to accuse Baldock of having made complaints about them to the commission out of ‘pure malice’, thereby having ‘been the occasyoner of there inquietnes vexacon and troble’. Baldock apparently did not deny the charge and was committed to the town jail until he promised to improve his behaviour.

He seems to have become somewhat of a reformed character because when he made his will in 1528, he sought burial before the image of St Thomas in the hospital’s chapel if he died there. Under these circumstances the church would receive 40s with a further 6s8d to the high altar. His fellow brothers and sisters were to receive 12d each, and he also gave alms in cash to the Carmelite friars and the brothers and sisters at St John’s hospital, while the residue of his goods were to be used for charitable deeds for the benefit of his soul as directed by his sole executor. Nevertheless, the mayor and jurats, as patrons of St Bartholomew’s hospital, might be viewed as in a sense coming out on top in this relationship with William Baldock because after his death, they claimed authority to determine how the residue of his goods should be used. The residue amounted to the considerable sum of £40 which allowed the civic authorities to purchase the bailiwick of Sandwich from the crown, this pleased them greatly, but that’s part of another story!

So to finish for this week, it is great to report that Canterbury Commemoration Society with others have been instrumental in the placing of a series of blue plaques commemorating people associated with St Augustine’s Abbey and the site thereafter on the wall at Longport. If you are in Canterbury, please do have a look. Secondly, looking at the lecture programmes of local societies, the second CHAS lecture will be on Wednesday 8 October at 7.05pm in St Paul’s church when Tim Tatton-Brown will speak on ‘Canterbury Castle: reminiscences of CAT’s first excavation and building recording’. Then the next evening the Canterbury branch of the Historical Association has its AGM (6.15pm) and first lecture at Old Sessions House, CCCU at 7pm when Jonathan Sumption, Lord Sumption, will speak on ‘The Hundred Years War and its Legacy’. Anyone interested should come along and you can either join the relevant society on the night or pay a small charge to hear that specific lecture.      

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