With contributions from Cirencester Archaeological & Historical Society, Cirencester Civic Society, members & friends
Croome Lecture links history and archaeology
Among the many successes of Cirencester’s first History Festival, established in the town last autumn, was the use of a number of local venues to hold events and thereby linking up with several well-established societies already providing public lectures in and around the town. Indeed Cirencester is very lucky in the amount of such activity and over a long period of time. This article looks briefly at an aspect of all that effort.
One tradition is a series of lectures under the umbrella of a named individual, who is thus remembered for his or her own achievements in public life. The Croome Lectures is one such, and the 2025 lecture will be held in Cirencester Parish Church on Wed 26 February at 7.30pm. Archaeologist Phil Harding, a familiar face on television, is the guest speaker. The church is now well-established as a lecture, concert and event venue, offering plenty of space and with the still-rare benefit of underfloor heating as a bonus on those long winter nights!
Other named lecture series in the town include the annual autumn Winstone Talk, now a key component in the History Festival, supported by the K.D. Winstone Charitable Trust in memory of a local business family in the town. Also the Mick Aston Lecture sponsored annually in the early summer by Cotswold Archaeology, a leading archaeology consultancy operating nationally from their base at Kemble. Mick – he of the colourful sweater – was one of Britain’s most successful popularisers of archaeology together with Phil Harding as core members of television’s Time Team series. His death in 2013 aged only 66 was a sad loss to his many friends.
Phil too is a colourful character, a Time Team regular renowned for his headgear, rich West Country accent and ability to enthuse viewers and listeners with archaeological discoveries he has made. His talk is entitled ‘Along the Line – My Life in Archaeology’ and by the long-standing tradition of the Croome Lecture series admission is free. All are welcome.
The Croome Lectures have a good and long pedigree, the 2025 talk being its fifty-sixth in the series. The first was held in 1969. Throughout, history and archaeology have been happy bed-fellows, with topics comfortably mixed and the series inspired by and run jointly on an alternate-year basis by Cirencester Civic Society [CCS] and Cirencester Archaeological & Historical Society [CAHS]. Since the pandemic break in 2022, CAHS has taken the lead. So, quite an achievement over more than half a century!
Who was Will Croome (1891-1967) after whom the series was named, and why? The full story is told on the CAHS website pages devoted to Croome, including his personal history and a full list of speakers and topics over the years. He was very much a man of his time, apparently long gone now, with deep Gloucestershire and Cirencester family connections back to the late 16th century. His family home was Cerney House at North Cerney.
Croome’s life’s work was in the care and preservation of churches, at all levels via county and national bodies where he served, frequently as committee chair. Throughout he drew his inspiration from the outstanding survival and quality of medieval and later churches in Cotswold villages and towns all around him. That legacy is still with us today thanks to the work he and others did to help them survive.
He was well connected throughout the church hierarchy and his work load was immense, involving much travel for site meetings, committee deliberations etc, with the inevitable to and fro by train between Kemble and London. The rate of threat and loss to church buildings, especially in London, was particularly acute during the Second World War, giving him much concern for loss of this priceless heritage.
In Cirencester he was very involved in town life, not least as Chairman of the Magistrates Bench, and he had a particular fondness for its outstanding parish church. His closest devotion was reserved for All Saints at North Cerney, another Cotswold gem where he expended much time, effort, expertise and money to create the essay in historical quality which we see today. It is well worth a visit.
Will Croome worked up to his death aged 76 in 1969, still very much ‘in harness’. Two years later the Lecture series was introduced in his memory.
David Viner
With thanks to Jonathan MacKechnie-Jarvis
Websites
[CAHS list of Croome Lectures]
[1993 Croome Lecture]
[Mick Aston Lecture]
Support Cirencester’s principal heritage societies and their event programmes: Archaeological & Historical Society (www.cirenhistory.org.uk) and Civic Society (www.ccsoc.org.uk), which runs a programme of Town Walks in the season plus pre-booked for small groups. See the Society’s website or phone William Cooper on 01285 88 55 90.
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