Several people asked if we would repeat the series of presentations we delivered earlier this year. So we are going to have a Saturday "Omnibus Edition" on 22 May 2010 in the Friends' Meeting House, Great Ayton.
The presentations are as follows:
9:30am. Waynman Dixon - Egypt to Easby Lane. Waynman Dixon spent his retirement in the village after a fascinating working life. All too often, others are credited with his achievements, the most notable being the transportation of Cleopatra's Needle to London.
10:30am. Cook Cottage - Easby Lane to Melbourne. Most villagers will be familiar with the obelisk on the site of James Cook's parents' cottage, and here is the chance to find out how we came to exchange an important part of our heritage for a pile of stones from Australia.
11:30am. Tanning - turning cows into coats. Great Ayton, like many other Cleveland villages, had several tanyards. This presentation takes us through the traditional tanning process, explaining what local resources were needed and why the process was so obnoxious.
1:30pm. Richardson tanyards - Ayton to Newcastle. William Richardson started making leather at Langbaurgh Farm towards the end of the seventeenth century, and by the mid-twentieth century his descendents had one of the largest tanneries in England, at Newcastle upon Tyne.
2:30pm. Outram Cottages and the adjacent houses. Outram Cottages, near the petrol station on the Guisborough Road, are a familiar landmark. Find out why they were built and so-named, and why one of them had to surrender its back rooms to Tower House.
3:00pm. What the papers said. Newspapers are a wonderful source of information, and modern information technology enables us to pick out articles on Great Ayton. If it's in the paper it must be true.
4:00pm. Public Health in Ayton. Life wasn't so easy in the "good old days". Many diseases were fatal, drinking water was far from pure, and food was adulterated. And there was no National Health Service. Find out how Aytonians coped through these difficult times.
There will be coffee and tea available between each presentation and entry is FREE, with the usual comment that small contributions for refreshments would be welcomed.
There should be opportunities for questions and discussion after each presentation. Some of the presentations will be incorporating new material as a result of previous audience contributions and further research since they were first delivered.
If you would like to know a bit more about the Omnibus Day or individual presentations, please contact Ian Pearce on 01642 722964.
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