Book a talk

Are you a local school, college, group or society?

We offer a number of bookable talks given by our expert museum staff. The talks need to be pre-booked and cost £65 (if you’re in North Hertfordshire: for talks outside the area, we charge travelling expenses on top of the basic fee). Talks can be held at the Museum (for up to 40 people) or at your own venue (for as many people as your venue can hold).

The talks usually last an hour and can be daytime or evening.

For more information or to book a talk, please email us.

Please see a list of the talks available below:

Ros Allwood – Cultural Services Manager

  • The art of William Ratcliffe and the Camden Town Group
  • Spencer Gore in the Garden City
  • The Arts & Crafts Movement in North Herts, looking particularly at Ickleford and Letchworth
  • Paintings in the North Herts museum collection

Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews – Museum Curator and Heritage Access Officer

Keith’s local interest talks

  • The Archaeology of [Ashwell, Baldock, Bygrave, Codicote, Hitchin, Kelshall, Kimpton, Letchworth Garden City, Lilley, Royston, Stevenage, Wymondley – and others as requested]
  • A Pockmarked Boundary: the Early Iron Age pit alignment at Baldock
  • Arbury Banks (Ashwell) and its ancient landscape
  • Copper Alloy Controversies: local discoveries that have made the news for all the wrong reasons
  • The Dead of Ancient Baldock: what can burials tell us about living people?
  • The Discovery of a Wealthy Roman Burial at Kelshall
  • Early Medieval Charters of North Hertfordshire
  • Fairgrounds for the Dead: Neolithic North Herts
  • The Four Elements: exploring ancient religion in North Hertfordshire
  • The Heritage of North Hertfordshire
  • How Old Is the Icknield Way: ancient track or medieval myth?
  • The Ice Age in North Hertfordshire
  • The Industrial Archaeology of North Hertfordshire
  • The Iron Age in North Hertfordshire (or, Why Can’t We Call the Ancient Britons ‘Celts’?)
  • Norton Henge and the Baldock Bowl
  • The Origins of Hitchin
  • Place-Names and the Early History of Britain
  • Placenames, language change and the history of North Hertfordshire
  • The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (The Knights Templar) and their North Hertfordshire connections
  • Purwell Bathhouse: Roman villa or something else?
  • Royston Cave and the Knights Templar?
  • The Best Prehistoric Landscape outside Wessex? The Archaeology of Therfield Heath
  • Wilbury: the ‘Willow Fort’?
  • The Woman and Three Babies: the story of an ordinary life and extraordinary death in early Roman Baldock

Keith’s general interest talks

  • Anglo-Saxon England
  • The Archaeology of Subculture
  • Ancient Egypt
  • Bad Archaeology: how pseudoscientists mislead the public
  • Do Local Historians Need to Be Archaeologically Literate?
  • King Arthur: man or myth?
  • Love and Marriage
  • Odd Pots and Foreigners: the end of Roman Britain
  • Prehistoric Flints
  • Prehistoric Malta
  • The Prehistory of Britain
  • Punk: more than music
  • The Roman Amphitheatre at Chester
  • Roman Britain
  • Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas and Father Christmas: what’s the difference?
  • What Is Archaeology?

Keith’s LGBTQIA+ talks

  • Before Trans: gender identity in the pre-modern world
  • Clones, Queens and Ladyboys: the archaeology of gay gender identity
  • LGBTQI+ History
  • Rhythms of the Rainbow: how gay people have changed the course of popular music
  • Romosexuality: sexuality in the ancient world

Matthew Platt – Assistant Curator

  • Hitchin Priory: Home of Monks, Monkeys and Tyrants
  • Wonders of nature
  • Collections of Life and Death
  • Ice Age to ICL: technology through time
  • Strange happenings in Hertfordshire: Over a century of unusual stories
  • The World’s First Football Museum
  • Echoes of the Second World War: Stories told by objects at North Hertfordshire Museum