The annual conference arranged by SLHA’s Industrial Archaeology team was held in Grantham on 19 November on the theme of Lincolnshire Railways. Stephen Betteridge, leader of the IA Team, took the chair for the day. A wide range of topics were covered.

Charles Parker gave a personal view of the North Lincolnshire Light Railway which ran a passenger service from Scunthorpe via Winterton and Winteringham to Whitton and its ferry on the banks of the Humber from 1910. There was also a freight link to Flixbrorough wharf on the Trent. The northernmost 3-mile stetch to Whitton closed in the 1950s and the truncated line ending at Winteringham Station closed in 1964. Charles showed photographs from his personal collection of the line in operation and the ironstone mines through which it ran.

Steve Stubbins spent all his working life at Scunthorpe’s steelworks and over the years amassed a huge collection of photographs of the 85-mile rail network around the site, some taken by himself, and some historic. The conference was treated to a selection of these photographs, with his knowledgeable commentary. These included locomotives (both steam and diesel), freight wagons of every description and views of steelmaking plant not normally seen by visitors and rarely captured on film.

Peter Balderston presented a talk on the Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway, with which he has been closely involved for 40 years. This two-foot gauge railway was originally located in Cleethorpes and then, after a period of forced closure, re-opened in 2009 on a ¾ mile long track at the Water Leisure Park at Ingoldmells. Much of the line’s ‘hardware’ and rolling stock originated from World War One battlefield tracks via the Nocton farm railway of the inter-war years. The LCLR’s most celebrated locomotive, ‘Jurassic’, is a Peckett steam loco built in 1903 and rescued from a cement works near Rugby.

Peter Worsley grew up in Grimsby and was very familiar with the Grimsby and Immingham Electric Railway which carried passengers - principally workmen - between the two ports from 1912 to 1961. He gave a detailed history of this single-track line of standard gauge which ran from Corporation Bridge in Grimsby to the landward end of the eastern jetty at Immingham. Electricity (500 volts, DC) was supplied by the small power station situated at Immingham Docks with a primary function to run cranes and lock gates. One railcar, originally from Gateshead and no longer in the G&IER livery, has been preserved in the Crich tramway collection.

'Making tracks through Grantham' was the title of a talk given by John Clayson and Mel Smith. This wide-ranging talk presented a history of the main line and lesser lines linked to the town since the mid-nineteenth century. For many years the station was an important stopping point on the East Coast Main Line where steam locomotives were serviced, topped up and re-fuelled. Famous trains from each era stopped or raced through; freight trains (fish, iron ore, for example) were also in evidence. Like other busy main-line stations there was a large body of railway workers performing a variety of tasks to keep the railway running smoothly and attending to the needs of passengers and commercial customers.

Photographs: At Scunthorpe Steelworks (top), Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway (centre), Grimsby & Immingham Electric Railway (bottom) 

Dr Roger White of the University of Birmingham, who has 40 years’ experience of Wroxeter in Shropshire, was the speaker at a meeting of Society members at St Hugh’s Hall on 14 September.

Wroxeter, site of the Roman town of Viriconium, has a rich tradition of responses to its archaeology from poets, artists, writers and even musicians.

This is unusual, especially for Roman sites, and Dr White’s lecture explored both the diversity of material, and why the site has been so engaging over the centuries.

The annual Brackenbury Lecture, organised jointly with the Tennyson Society, the Wolds Methodist Church and SLHA, was held in Raithby’s historic Methodist Chapel on Saturday 9 July. The speaker was Dr Jim Cheshire of the University of Lincoln; his topic: Tennyson's Cornwall and Idylls of the King: Poetic Research and the Diffusion of Celtic Culture.

The lecture discussed Tennyson’s tours of Cornwall in 1848 and 1860 and how this informed the genesis of Idylls of the King. Dr Cheshire argued that Tennyson simultaneously popularised and diluted the Celtic roots of Arthurian literature and that the way Victorian culture co-opted Tennyson’s poem, merged the myth with the growing admiration for the Anglo-Saxons.