Lectures

OAHS Lecture Programme


Our annual lecture programme comprises 10 lectures. From October to December lectures will be held live at Rewley House, open to everyone and FREE to attend. There is no need to book a seat.

The venue is the Lecture Theatre, Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JA and lectures start at 5.30. [https://what3words.com/units.third.ledge]

In January and February lectures will be online on Zoom, and members can book a place by clicking the link in the description in order to receive the link. Booking for these lectures will open in December. The final lecture in March will be live at Rewley House and also available on Zoom.

For lectures held online using Zoom, booking is required. The list closes at midnight on the Sunday before the lecture or sooner if we reach capacity. As Zoom only allows 100 people to log in for each lecture, OAHS members will be given priority. One booking covers everyone who will be listening on one device, so your household companions are welcome to join you. Bookings for the 2024 lectures will open in December.

We will record each of the online lectures, if the speaker agrees, and the recording will be available for members shortly afterwards for about a month.

An Outsider at Oxford: The Experiences of W.G. Hoskins, 1952-1965


Date: 28 November 2023
Time: 17.30-18.30
Lecturer: Robert Peberdy
Location: Rewley House
Cost: Free
No of Places: 110


This lecture is now over. Click to view the recordings page (member login required)

In 1951 W.G. Hoskins, a lecturer at University College, Leicester, aged 43, accepted an invitation to become Reader in Economic History at Oxford University. This talk will explore his experiences in the next fourteen years as he coped with life in an unfamiliar inward-looking institution while he simultaneously became one of the best-known historians in England.

Dr Robert Peberdy is currently writing a biography of W.G. Hoskins. He was formerly an Assistant Editor of the Oxfordshire VCH, and co-editor (with Philip Waller) of A Dictionary of British and Irish History (OUP).

Oxford's Library Buildings


Date: 12 December 2023
Time: 17.30-18.30
Lecturer: Geoffrey Tyack
Location: Rewley House
Cost: Free
No of Places: 110


No Booking Required

Oxford’s libraries are among the best and most comprehensive in the world. From the 13th century onwards the university, the colleges and eventually the city have needed to accommodate ever-growing collections of books and manuscripts: a problem that, despite the recent spread of digital resources, has still not gone away. This lecture discusses the changing responses to this challenge, drawing attention both to well-known libraries, including the Bodleian, and to smaller and less frequented examples, many of them of great architectural interest.

Dr Geoffrey Tyack is the current President of OAHS. He is an architectural historian, and has written extensively on the architecture of Oxford and Oxfordshire. Together with Dan Paton he is writing an illustrated book on the architecture of Oxford’s university, college and city libraries, to be published next year.

Our lectures for 2024:
  • 9 January - Kirsty Wright: Oxford Buildings and the Reconstruction of Royalist Government 1642-1646
  • 23 January - Ben Ford: Recent Discoveries at Frewin Hall Oxford: A Lost College and so much more
  • 6 February - John Stevenson: An Oxford Architectural Dilemma - The Tinbergen Building
  • 20 February - Jane Harrison: The Deserted Manor and Village of Besselsleigh: from Anglo-Saxon Beginnings to the Civil War
  • 5 March - Elizabeth Gemmill: The Tom Hassall Lecture 2024: Remember Me: Inscriptions of Medieval Oxfordshire (Rewley House and online on Zoom)