Join us for what promises to be a varied and fascinating Study Day.
London’s sumptuous Victorian and Edwardian department stores changed the capital – and changed its women. Shoppers of every rank were lavishly wooed, seduced and often undone by the temptations laid out before them in these new ‘cathedrals of desire’. But as consumerism reached ever more frenzied levels, the natural world began to suffer. This varied and fascinating day brings to life the untold stories behind objects, institutions, and ‘invisible’ people of the Victorian and Edwardian era.
You’ll learn about:
Lecture One. London’s Lost Department Stores
A walk around the capital in the Golden Age of shopping.
Lecture Two. Secrets of an Edwardian Shopaholic
The cautionary tale of Heather Firbank, whose entire couture wardrobe ended up in the V&A.
Lecture Three. Fashion, Fury & Feathers
‘Murderous millinery’ and the anti-fashion origins story of the RSPB.
Tessa Boase
Tessa Boase is a freelance journalist, author, lecturer and campaigner with an interest in uncovering the stories of invisible women from the 19th and early 20th-centuries – revealing how they drove industry, propped up society and influenced politics.
She’s the author of three books of social history: The Housekeeper’s Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House (2014); Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds (first published as Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather in 2018), and London’s Lost Department Stores: A Vanished World of Dazzle and Dreams (2022).
Since uncovering the feminist origins of the RSPB, Tessa has been campaigning for public recognition of its female founders with plaques, portraits and a statue.
The Study Day will be held at Castle Grove Hall starting at 10.00 am and running until 3.00 pm with a break for lunch.
The cost for the day will be £65 to include unlimited tea and coffee and a light lunch.
Tickets will go on sale at the May lecture. A maximum of 35 seats are available.