Crowds and Clouds of Angels
Digby Hall, Sherborne
Wednesday 2 December 2026
3 pm and 7 pm
There are so many angels there could seem to be an avalanche of them. It’s unusual for there not to be an image of at least one angel, if not many in our churches and cathedrals and yet passers-by know very little about them. We hear of tens of thousands in the Bible and other early texts but a surprise is how many of their names are known to us. Where do they come from and what are they for? We can see a hierarchy in the Nine Orders of Angels but that’s rather general and was devised in the 6th Century. What about the rest of them? Are they male or female? And what do they look like? Angelic beings wearing white nighties and gold wings are more of a Victorian concept and it seems that the biblical ones were originally flightless – so when did they get their wings?
Lecturer: Imogen Corrigan
After nearly 20 years in the British army, went to the University of Kent to study Anglo-Saxon & Medieval History and Art, graduating with 1st class honours, followed by an MPhil from the University of Birmingham. Works as a freelance lecturer across Britain and Europe as well as lecturing on small cruise ships and running study tours and courses on land. Has written Stone on Stone: the Men Who Built the Cathedrals, published 2019. A Freeman of the City of London, being a Member of the Company of Communicators. Advisor on memorials and monuments for Canterbury’s Diocesan Advisory Committee.
Wednesday 4 November 2026
Wednesday 2 September 2026
Wednesday 1 July 2026
In the 1880s, the fishing village of Newlyn in the far West of Cornwall became a mecca for rural realist painters, who documented the lives of the local community in their beautiful and moving paintings. This talk will outline the key characteristics of this famous art movement, introducing the ‘father of the Newlyn School’ Stanhope Forbes and his talented wife Elizabeth (nee Armstrong), along with a host of their fellow artists, including Frank Bramley, Walter Langley, Albert Chevallier Tayler and Henry Scott Tuke tales, as well as some of the real-life characters they depicted.
Wednesday 6 May 2026
David Winpenny
Going with the Flow
the Flow’ looks at all things watery, from ancient oases to Egyptian and Roman gardens, pools in Persian Paradises, cascades in Italian jardini and their progeny in later centuries, fountains from simple spurt to fantastic frolic, formal and informal lakes and ornamental canals, from Dutch influence to modern usage.
The world’s longest cascade is near Naples, while the most lavish is at Peterhof near St Petersburg. the world’s tallest gravity-fed fountain is in a Cotswold garden) while artificial waterfalls also have their place as gardens became more natural in the 18th century.
The formality of canals, influenced both by Louis XIV’s Versailles and by the Dutch, gives way to the irregular shapes of lakes, while in the 21st century we see a return to greater formality, especially in the use of water to offset iconic buildings.
And the talk will have a few surprises. How do crayfish figure in the story of water in gardens? Did suddenly surprising your guests by squirting water at them really make them laugh? Why did Louis XIV need fourteen 38-foot water wheels and 60 staff at Versailles? How does Catherine the Great’s dinner service feature here? And, what do we know about Prior Wilbert’s Waterworks?
Wednesday 1 April 2026
Caroline Petipher
Whenever a major museum is robbed of its treasures, the BBC website reports the event under the heading ‘Entertainment’. The implications of this are more interesting than they at first seem. Art thefts have been a constant presence in the news media since the early decades of the twentieth century and Hollywood and international cinema were not slow to catch on to the general public’s fascination with these dark developments. This talk seeks to draw connections between three strands — the rise of the international art market from 1900, the theft of major works of art from museums and private houses in the twentieth century, and the emergence of cinema as an art form in the early twentieth century. All three can be seen to feed off one another. Criminals noticed the extraordinary prices being paid for masterpieces and responded accordingly, while cinema latched on to these real-life thriller crime narratives, turning art thieves into glamorous anti-heroes such as Thomas Crown. More recently, art collectors have sought ever more secure locations in which to store their art, with freeport warehouses now holding billions of dollars of the world’s masterpieces. This talk traces the connections between some of the most popular art heist movies and the reality of the art market and reveals one or two little-known examples of early ‘art crime cinema.’