Review: A history of Thatcham

Over 50 people attended the third event of the "Peter Allen Memorial Lectures" on Saturday 15th May 2010. The event consisted of two talks, the first was a talk on the history of Thatcham given by Dr Nick Young, chair of Thatcham Historical Society. The second talk, given by Tony Higgott who is also from Thatcham Historical Society, detailed how anyone who is interested can get started in local history. Nick highlighted the importance of Thatcham noting some of the important finds, a few of which date to at least 10,000BC.

Nick gave a brief overview of Thatcham's history including the Victoria Cross winners, the Tomlin shelter and the "Internationally" important Hart's Hill site which caused the history books to be re-written. Tony highlighted some of the sources available which include not only books but records offices, Internet sites and photographs as well as members of the local community. Both talks invited a great deal of discussion to which both the audience and speakers learned something new. The venue for this event was sponsored by local firm DevZen.

The events are in memory of the late Peter Allen who passed away one year ago, to raise money for the British Heart Foundation in memory of Peter Allen and also to promote National Local History Month. So far we have raised in excess of £100. We have copies of the "Journal of Thatcham Historical Society" and "Thatcham: an historic town in a changing world" for sale at all events at £7 and £3 respectively. Thatcham Historical Society and Thatcham Vision are donating £1 from the sale of each copy to us for the British Heart Foundation.