All enquiries to Mrs Melissa Wright mwright@boltonschool.org.uk 07912369060

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Bolton Branch Programme 2026-27 

 

Monday 14 September 2026

Joanna Williams, Manchester author, biographer and historian

The Great Miss Lydia Becker, Suffragist, Scientist and Trailblazer

Fifty years before women were enfranchised, a legal loophole allowed up to a thousand women to vote in the general election of 1868. This surprising event occurred due to the feisty and single-minded dedication of Lydia Becker, the acknowledged, though unofficial, leader of the British women's suffrage movement in the later 19th century.

 Brought up in a middle-class family as the eldest of fifteen children, she broke away from convention, remaining single and entering the sphere of men by engaging in science and politics. She addressed innumerable audiences, not only on women's votes, but also on the position of wives, the abuse of women, and their rights at work. She battled grittily to gain academic education for poor girls and kept countless supporters all over Britain and beyond abreast of the many campaigns for women's rights through her publication, the Women's Suffrage Journal.

 Steamrollering her way to Parliament as chief lobbyist for women, she influenced MPs in a way that no woman, and few men, had done before. In the 1860s the idea of women's suffrage was compared in the Commons to persuading dogs to dance; it was dismissed as ridiculous and unnatural. By the time of Lydia's death in 1890 there was a wide acceptance that the enfranchisement of women would happen, sooner or later. The torch was picked up by Lydia's younger colleague on the London committee, Millicent Fawcett, and by a woman she had inspired as a teenager, Emmeline Pankhurst.

 

Monday 5 October 2026

Dr Jonathan Hogg, University of Liverpool

British nuclear test veterans

 

Monday 9 November 2026

Speaker TBC

Battle of Winwick

The Battle of Winwick Society was founded in July 2023 to create a greater awareness of the importance of the Winwick Battlefield. The society wants to ensure that the battlefield is protected, preserved and enhanced, and it undertakes research into the battle and promotes battlefield archaeology.

 

The Battle of Winwick was fought on Saturday 19 August 1648 in the fields to the north of Winwick. The battle, in which an army of the English Parliament fought a Scottish army known as the ‘Engagers’ was the last major action that was fought as part of the Second Civil War (1648-9). Over 9,000 men took part in the battle and over 1,000 were killed.

 

Monday 7 December 2026

HA Bolton heat of the Great Debate

Can your local environment help us to understand national and global histories? 

 

Monday 11 January 2027

(Meeting to be arranged)

 

Monday 1 February 2027

Natasha Jenman, DPhil Student at St Edmund Hall, Oxford

Behind Every Great Man...? Jewish Women and Power in Medieval England 

Medieval England is often imagined as a man's world, but women could – and did – exercise considerable influence through familial networks, property ownership, and commercial activity. This talk examines the lives of Jewish women specifically, with a focus on widowhood. This was a period in which a woman's legal and economic position could change dramatically. While the death of a husband brought new vulnerabilities, it could also create opportunities for women to act independently. Through the narratives of individual women, we will explore what power might have looked like for Jewish women in medieval England, and challenge the cliché implied by the title: were they merely “behind” powerful men, or were they powerful figures in their own right?

 

Monday 1 March 2027

Dr Alberto Esu, University of Manchester

Athenian Democracy