Wallingford Museum News
The team at Wallingford Museum are looking forward to opening once again, from Saturday March1st 2025. As usual the winter months have been hectic and busy behind the scenes.
This year’s 2025 exhibition -
‘Barley to Beer, the Story of Malting, Brewing and Pubs in Wallingford’
The countryside around Wallingford has always been suitable for the growing of barley and since early times the barley has been malted and used for the brewing of beer.
The production of malt has been a major trade in the town since at least the 17th century. Brewing developed as a Wallingford industry at about the same time, reaching its heyday in the 19th century when Edward Wells' brewery was particularly well known for its stout beer. The business became Wallingford Brewery Limited in 1896 with the name continuing until around 1960, although brewing in Wallingford ceased in 1928.
Associated with brewing was, of course, drinking. The retail outlet was the inn, beer house or public house. More than 50 pubs are known to have existed in the town - many at the same time in the 19th century. Approaches to regulating beer drinking have ranged from who can sell it and where they can sell it to limiting the times people can drink it in public places. Sometimes these regulations arose in response to groups, such as the 19th century Temperance Movement, who campaigned against alcohol which led to the closure of many pubs in the early part of the 20th century. Wallingford Brewery even produced in 1908 a ‘Temperance drink ’called Footer, a precursor to today’s move towards low/zero alcoholic drinks.
This exhibition tells the story of malting, brewing and drinking in Wallingford through the centuries using the results of recent research. On March 12 Steve Capel-Davies will be offering a THWHAS talk about the research underpinning this exhibition.
The Museum second hand book shop reopens as well with an excellent selection of fiction and non fiction books. You can drop in anytime during museum opening hours.
https://www.wallingfordmuseum.org.uk
The Wallingford Historical and Archaeological Society
Please see the web site for further details:
https://www.twhas.org.uk/meetings-programme.html
Anthony Bale:‘ The Shape of the Medieval World, according to John Mandeville’
(postponed from Feb 2024)
It was well-known in the later Middle Ages that planet Earth was round - the challenge was how to go round it. One of the main sources of knowledge about the shape of the world was the widely-read and much translated Book of Marvels and Travels (c. 1356) by Sir John Mandeville. Mandeville claimed to be a knight of St Alban's in Hertfordshire, but that was almost certainly not his true identity. This talk will consider the shape of the medieval world as described by Mandeville, and what this means for our knowledge of medieval geography and travel.
Our speaker, Anthony Bale, is Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck in the University of London. He is the author most recently of A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: the World through Medieval Eyes (Penguin, 2023). He has translated and edited Mandeville's Book of Marvels and Travels (Oxford, 2012) and studied medieval travel, pilgrimage, and cultural geography.
March 12 (Weds)
Steve Capel-Davies: " Barley to Beer'
Wallingford’s malting and brewing history
Sue Wright January 202