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

  • Anglo-Saxon England
  • The Archaeology of [Ashwell, Baldock, Bygrave, Codicote, Hitchin, Kelshall, Kimpton, Letchworth Garden City, Royston, Stevenage, Wymondley – and others as requested]
  • The Archaeology of Subculture
  • Ancient Egypt
  • Bad Archaeology: how pseudoscientists mislead the public
  • Clones, Queens and Ladyboys: the archaeology of gay gender identity
  • The Dead of Ancient Baldock: what can burials tell us about living people?
  • The Discovery of a Wealthy Roman Burial at Kelshall
  • Do Local Historians Need to Be Archaeologically Literate?
  • Early Medieval Charters of North Hertfordshire
  • Fairgrounds for the Dead: Neolithic North Herts
  • The Four Elements: earth, air, fire and water
  • 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’?)
  • King Arthur: man or myth?
  • LGBTQI+ History
  • Love and Marriage
  • Norton Henge and the Baldock Bowl
  • Odd Pots and Foreigners: the end of Roman Britain
  • 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
  • Prehistoric Flints
  • Prehistoric Malta
  • The Prehistory of Britain
  • Punk: more than music
  • Purwell Bathhouse: Roman villa or something else?
  • The Roman Amphitheatre at Chester
  • Roman Britain
  • Romosexuality: sexuality in the ancient world
  • Royston Cave and the Knights Templar?
  • The Best Prehistoric Landscape outside Wessex? The Archaeology of Therfield Heath
  • What Is Archaeology?
  • The Woman and Three Babies: the story of an ordinary life and extraordinary death

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