Harlaxton History Society
2023-24 Committee
Chair - Kevin Lawry
Secretary - Keith Young
Treasurer - Kate Darcy
Membership Secretary - Kevin Price
Committee members
Website manager - Douglas Brown
Facebook manager - Kim Ridgeway
Speaker Co-ordinator Paul West
Committee Member - Sue Hiorns
Committee Member - Sean Scargill
Harlaxton History Society was formed in 2022 by a group of villagers interested in finding out more about the history of their community, the area in which it sits and to share what they found more widely. Membership now stands at more than 100 and costs just £15 a year.
The Society meets on a monthly basis, usually on the second Wednesday of the month in the village hall in Harlaxton. These meetings usually take the form of a presentation or demonstration by an expert in the history associated with the village. Members attend these events for free. Non members pay just £2.
Membership can be arranged with any member of the Society Committee at any Society meeting.
In it's first year speakers have given presentations on topics as diverse as The Roman "salt road" which runs through the parish, Neolithic flint napping, The Machine Gun Corps in the First World War and Women in rural societies. Members also go on visits and undertake first hand research which is then shared back.
The Harlaxton History Society has a productive relationship with Harlaxton Manor, a college of the University of Evansville in the US. In its first year members were active in helping the college undertake a number of archaeology projects in and around the village, exploring sites from the Neolithic to Georgian.
Our current projects include an ongoing study into the social history of the village, broken down by street and house.
The latest findings of our "Streets through Time" can be found here.
In line with it's commitment to sharing the history of the village as widely as possible, the Society's first public event was an exhibition of pictures and and artefacts charting the development of the village socially held as part of the Jubilee celebrations in June 2022 .
Built around content offered by villagers the exhibition attracted almost 400 visitors in the two days it was open in the village hall.
See a sample of the photographs included in the exhibition below.
