| Tuesday 8th May
2007 |
Could Peeblesshire become
a 'green county'? Produce more green energy than it
consumes
and
become carbon negative.? How could it be done, what would the effect be
on the environment? How would it affect our standard of living. A presentation by the U3A Science and the
Community Group. |
| September
2008 |
THE
MINES AND QUARRIES OF WEST LINTON- Susan Oakes
West Linton¹s present idyllic rural setting hides a surprisingly
active industrial past. Susan Oakes has been researching the mines and
quarries of the area for over twenty years and her talk will be about
the fascinating history of some of the 50 sites she has discovered.
These include many coal mines, stone quarries, brick works, lead
mines and an ironstone mine.One site, dating back to the 12
century, has recently revealed some stunning
archaeology.Material recovered by Susan from this site has added
significantly to the medieval artefacts collections in the National
Museum of Scotland. Sue will also touch on the desperate working
conditions in the mines, where whole families were employed,
including children as young as 6 yrs., in horrendous
circumstances.This intriguing talk, illustrated with slides, highlights
a neglected part of our heritage, industrial archaeology. |
November 2008
|
Scots
Emigration
since
1840.-
Alan
Cameron
Whenever Scots talk about emigration the picture which tends to be seen
is of the Highland Clearances. While very dramatic this is very far
from the whole story. In terms of numbers of emigrants they represent a
minority, and from only one part of Scotland. The story is much more
complex, and there are few Scottish families that do not have, and
continue to have, relatives in North America, Australia or New Zealand.
That leaves aside the many who went south to London or the other
industrial areas of England to improve their prospects.This talk will
look primarily at North America, and emigration,
sponsored or otherwise by men who believed that `bare-breeked' boys
would have an opportunity to improve their lot in a new country.
|
|
| January
2009 |
Heather
Anderson will
speak
on
why organic
local
food
is
essential
to
achieving
sustainable
carbon
neutral
agriculture
in
Scotland
- and the
small part her farm is playing in that endeavour. |
| February
2009 |
| Dr Miles K Oglethorpe -
The Forth Bridge: A
Major Internationally Important Engineering Monument
Synopsis:
The Forth Bridge is currently on the UK tentative list of World
Heritage Site nominations,
but has yet to be nominated. A review
of
World Heritage Sites and the UK Tentative List has been commissioned by
DCMS, Historic Scotland and Cadw, and, assuming that the decision is
made to continue nominating British sites for world heritage site
status, it is likely that a new list will be compiled. There is
therefore a genuine danger that the Forth Bridge might be omitted from
the new list of UK candidates, so the aim of this presentation is to
discuss its significance both in a UK and international context.
The
presentation will therefore attempt to put the bridge into a historic
context, and will describe the construction process that brought it
into being. It will then consider the international significance
of
the bridge, identify the stakeholders who would be affected by a world
heritage site nomination, and assess the extent of the surviving
associated records and documentation. It will then conclude by
discussing the extent to which the bridge is recognised in Scotland,
the UK and beyond.
Miles
Oglethorpe is Head of Policy Liaison and Modernisation within the
Inspectorate at Historic Scotland, the Agency responsible for
safeguarding and promoting the historic environment within the Scottish
Government.
|
|
March 2009
|
David Galloway,will talk on earthquakes in general ... along the lines of what is an earthquake,
why and where they occur, deadly earthquakes, the damage they do and the casualties they cause
.... both in the UK and worldwide
|
April 2009
|
Gerald Bakker will
celebrate the 40th birthday of Stirling
University by describing the early days of
establishing the structure of the university, the project for the first
phase building the Pathfoot Building that had to be realised to a
very
short timescale to receive the first students. He will take
the story
up to the end of phase 2 where the university reached 3000 students and
make a brief comment on developments that have taken place since his
practice had completed its task.
In the late 1950s it was recognised
that a considerable expansion of the nation's universities would be
needed to cope with the increasing numbers of school leavers and
the students' aspiration to receive a higher level of
education. The
'Robins Report' studied the needs and it established that there were to
be two new universities in Scotland as well as expansion of those
exiting institutions.
Stirling was chosen as the first of
the new universities in Scotland and Gerald was lucky to move to the
Edinburgh practice of Robert Matthew Johnson - Marshall and Partners
and to join the new team of architects and planners setting about the
task of creating the new University of Stirling.
|
May 2009
|
A member of Médecins
Sans
Frontières,
Dr
Christa
Hook,
gave
a
talk
on
her
work
in
war
affected
countries
|
| June 2009 |
Juline Baird will an
overview of historical archive
collections held at the Scottish Borders Archive and Local History
Service and work being done to highlight treasures and create greater
access to the collections. The talk will include an insight into
work
with schools and community groups and will pick out some of the
treasures the staff have uncovered and worked on.’ |
September 2009
|
Campbell McLellan - The Life of the Osprey,
Covering the history of the osprey & local
birds with
up- to- date information. He has volunteered at
Glentress & Kailzie for the past 6 years. |
| October 2009 |
Exploring the
John Murray Archive: An illustrated talk
by curator David McClay which will uncover incredible stories from the
archives of the John Murray publishing house, who were responsible for
the works of Lord Byron, Jane Austen, Charles Darwin, David Livingstone
and many more |
November 2009
|
Mount
Sinai: Christian history, Bedouin culture and good walking, Talk
by Gordon Wilkinson
Gordon
runs a company called Yalla
Jabaleya! which
works with the local tribe, the Jabaleya, to introduce visitors to
the very special history, culture and environment of the Jabaleya
homeland.
Mount
Sinai and the Monastery of St Catherine have a rich history of
biblical drama, desert asceticism, cults of the saints and regional
politics, a place of pilgrimage and artistic marvels with the finest
collection of early icons in Christendom and the most important
library of ancient Christian manuscripts outside the Vatican.Gordon
has been living in the Bedouin village at the foot of Mount Sinai for
the last two years and will talk of the Christian history, Bedouin
culture and local ecology of the region.
|
Jan 2010
|
RCAHMS
at
the
junction
of
the
Eddleston
and
Tweed'' David
Easton
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland
(RCAHMS)
The
talk will be about the Peebles area, but more generally material
from RCAHMS that may be of use to researchers in your area.
The illustrations will include maps, historical photographs, air
photographs, both vertical and oblique and
some recent work our
air photography section has completed. The subject matter
will be both archaeology and architecture.
|
| Feb
2010 |
| Robyn
Marsack,
Director
of
the
Scottish
Poetry Library
since 2000, will talk about the Library, which
celebrated its 25th
anniversary in 2009, and Scottish poetry of the last 25 years. From
Edwin Morgan to Kathleen Jamie, this has been a rich and varied
quarter-century in Scottish poetry, and the SPL continues to be a great
place for exploring it all – and for poetry beyond these borders. |
|
March
2010
|
Collecting
plant
material
for
the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 'In
Search of Flowers’-
A talk by David
Knott
Curator Outdoor
Living
Collections
Inverleith,The
Royal
Botanic
Garden
Edinburgh |
April
2010
|
Sheena
Blair QMUC Will
speak about Lifelong Learning |
May 2010
|
Ruth
Washbrook Education and Outreach Officer, Scottish Screen
Archive, National Library of Scotland.
Ruth
will present a range of films from the archive and any local films we
may have and provide details on what kinds of films we have and how
to access our collections. The film show/presentation will last
about one hour. |
| June 2010 |
Peter
Raine
has
been
to Blantyre,
Malawi three
times
since he
retired
doing
children's
surgery
in
the
Queen
Elizabeth
Central
Hospital in
Blantyre. He will speak about his experiences and discuss the
diffictulties involved including, lack of available skills
and resources, massive morbidity and high incidence of
AIDS/HIV all
complicated by the enormous cultural, social and demographic problems
of a very poor independent African country.
|
| 14th September 2010 |
SUE
WHITE-OAKES Sculptor, Chartered Designer and
Illustrator.
Sue will show slides tracing the
development
of her sculpture over the last 20years, explaining
her technique and demonstrating how she
creates her works of art.
She trained as an Industrial Designer in
London in the 1950s and practised as a designer for many years working
in industry and as a consultant in London.
In her spare time she
painted and
made sculptures. On moving to Scotland in 1975 Sue concentrated on
sculpture and painting giving second place to her design work.
Sue now sculpts in copper using a
process akin
to silversmithing. She has developed and refined
her technique into a method of working that enables
her to tackle difficult subjects such as birds and delicate insects
.With her engineering background, Sue
has
a
keen
appreciation
of
the
perfectly
adapted
mechanical
structures
of
her
subjects,
and
this insight enables her to produce unique works
of art. She also makes many of her own
tools. many of her sculptures have been cast in bronze from the copper
original
She will bring along some
of
her
sculptures.
Sue
exhibits
widely
and
her
work
is
in
many private
collections in Britain and aboard. |
| 12th October 2010 |
Alan Cameron
will
address
the
subject
of
Robin
Hood
The tales of
Robin
Hood
belong to the same category of Rhymes as the Border Ballads. They
were part of an oral tradition developed and enhanced in the telling
for at least 200 years before we have the first written versions.
Other and similar cycles of tales the story of Ranulf, Earl of
Chester, and Hereward the Wake are referred to in literature from the
Middle Ages in England, but no text or version has survived to the
present. The Robin Hood tales have a strong geographical, social and
historical context. They are below stairs tales told round a fireside
in a language that is recognizably English, at a time when the upper
classes spoke and wrote in Norman French, and whose literature was
dominated by chivalric romances
|
| 9th November 2010 |
Jim
Barton: Travels
in the Arctic
Between
1990
and
2005
Jim
made
five
summer
trips
to
Greenland,
one
to
Svalbard,
and
a wildlife
cruise from Svalbard to Iceland via Greenland. He will concentrate on
three of these: firstly to the mountains near Tasermuit in South
Greenland, then the cruise via Jan Mayen (the world’s most
northerly volcano) to the East Greenland fiords, and a few from the
2005 trip to Geographical Society Island in the East Greenland fiord
system. He will include some photographs of Arctic birds and musk ox.
|
11th January 2011
|
January
-Odile Hugh - The story of Cashmere
shawls and Paisley
patters. Odile studied for a degree
in English at Aix-en- Provence University then took a Diploma in Social
Studies at Edinburgh university. She
French at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Stoke d'Abernon, then did a City
& Guild course in Creative Embroidery. It was at this is when she
researched
the story of the Cashemire Shawl & the Paisley pattern. This
research linked her love of Scotland with my native Provence. |
| 8th
February 2011 |
Philip Ashmole: Co-ordinator,
Carrifran
Wildwood
project
of
Borders
Forest
Trust
Ecological restoration of Carrifran and the Ettrick Forest
Philip Ashmole, who taught ornithology, ecology and
evolution at
Yale and Edinburgh Universities for thirty years will give a talk to
the Tweeddale U3A in February 2011 on the ecological restoration of
Carrifan and Ettrick Forest. Since taking early retirement in 1992 he
has spent much of his time promoting and implementing the restoration
of damaged natural habitats in Scotland and overseas.Carrifran Wildwood
was born out of the vision of the Peebles-based Wildwood Group that
ordinary but determined people,
pooling their energy and expertise, could bring back to just
one valley in the Southern Uplands, the kind of natural woodland that
would have covered almost the entire countryside a few millennia ago.
Now, after years of searching, planning and fundraising, followed by a
decade of planting (much of it by volunteers), 1600 acres of almost
totally denuded sheepwalk are being gradually transformed by the growth
of half a million native trees and shrubs. The mosaic of woodland and
open ground habitats becomes more natural-looking every month, and the
valley and its encircling hills are once again providing living space
for a host of wildlife species missing for many centuries.The
Wildwood Group hope that visitors to Carrifran from the Scottish
Borderlands and far afield, will learn something of the history of the
local landscape and be inspired by the success of a grass-roots
environmental project. Borders Forest Trust has many other projects
under way, which along with Carrifran will enhance the landscape and
increase the biodiversity of the area once occupied by the Ettrick
Forest. |
| 8th
March 2011 |
|
Phil Lucas will talk about
Ecumenical
accompaniment programme for
Palestine and Israel
|
|
|
|
| 12th
April
2011 |
Dr
Sandy Pollock: The history of the peptic ulcer |
| 10th
May
2011 |
Fred and Rita Daniels : Their
travels in Wild West
China (Not given)
|
| 14th
June
2011 |
|
Ruth Aird: My work in Romania
|
|
| 13 th September
2011 |
Ellen Walker
(Brightwater Holidays) Holidays with a
gardening theme |
| 11th October 2011 |
Roger Kelly (Mapa
Scotland) The Great Polish Map of
Scotland |
| 8 th November 2011 |
Kathy Henry (U3A) Funsani Orphanage,
Zambia |
|
|
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