Stratford sub Castle Village Website
Salisbury, Wiltshire UK

The Guild will be retiurning to a normal timing of a Wednesday evening at 7.30 pm for the 11 March talk Script to Screen: A Costume Design Journey by Val Greathead. The speaker will explore her costume design work in the context of 1980s television production and her subsequent creative journey.   Aspects of the design process from initial idea to finished costume are covered and she looks at the skills needed then and now to work in this creative field. She considers the cha

John Handby Our speaker John Handby, has spent his whole career in computing and AI occupying a number of very senior executive and advisory posts. He opened his talk with a brief indication of the potential benefits of AI but spent most of his talk opening our eyes to the dangers inherent in the technology. We started with the good news: AI will revolutionise health care, allow drugs to be designed and manufactured faster, enable early diagnosis of diseases like cancer and h

Stratford sub Castle Guild 15 January 2026  “Local Disaster Management and Recovery” Speaker - Chris Manuel   Thirty-four members and guests ignored the heavy rain outside and settled down for a 2 o’clock start to the first talk of the New Year.  What a fascinating and informative talk it turned out to be on an organisation that many of us have never heard of before. Chris Manuel, the Community Resilience Lead Officer for Wiltshire and Swindon Prepared, a multi-agency local d

Brilliant Mini Beasts - Speaker Juliet ten Doeschate A fascinating introduction to the amazing and intriguing world of invertebrates including wasps, butterflies, ladybirds, flies and many more. Some are very familiar and common visitors to our gardens, but others are so tiny (a mere 3mm) and so well hidden that we are not aware of them. Juliet concentrated principally upon those which inhabit her garden of 2 acres which is half woodland and half garden. Many are parasitic fe

Forged signatures and how to detect them - John Jameson-Davis   John stepped in when our booked speaker became ill and cancelled all speaking engagements. He answered our call while on holiday in Crete! John is a Questioned Handwriting and Document Examiner. His work mainly entails the examination of questioned signatures (those which have been challenged or doubted for some reason, perhaps on a Will, a passport, a bank or credit card or other document). He is also asked to l

The Guild's 2025-26 season began on Wednesday 10 September at 7.30 pm in the Reading Room, with a talk by Colin van Geffen entitled 'The Lady who saved the Nation'. Review follows:   When Mr van Geffen began his presentation by asking the audience who had heard of Lucy, no one had. This did not surprise him. By the end of his presentation, however, it seemed amazing that the life and achievements of this remarkable woman seem to have disappeared from our history.   Lucy was

“The Wonderful World of Glass” - Dr Francis Burroughs   Our speaker gave us a fascinating talk which traced the origins of glass-making...

There is nothing more enticing than a date as a heading for a dissertation by an historian. The date in this case was not enough to...

The local historian Ruth Newman was an especially welcome speaker at this meeting of the Stratford sub Castle Guild being well known to...

Fanny Nelson, a Hero’s Wife - a talk by Christine Mason    The connection between Horatio, Lord Nelson, his wife Fanny and Stratford sub...

Stratford sub Castle Guild Report February 2025 - "Pantomime – a classic British tradition" Our speaker, Wayne Newport, has spent 30...

Christine Mason’s talk on ‘Fanny’ Nelson was cancelled at short notice due to the difficult driving conditions on her route. It was...

Guild members enjoyed a convivial Christmas Social evening in the Reading Room on Wednesday 11th December. 2 photos courtesy of Guild...

Fireworks and Explosives a talk by Joe Cameron We all enjoyed a lively and appropriate talk for November. Joe introduced himself by his...

Stratford sub Castle Guild 9 October 2024 "Beauty and the Beast" Juliet ten Doeschate An amazing and beautiful photographic journal of...