Events during Winter 2025-6
Neville Hoskins Centenary Lecture, 13 December 2025
Richard Gaunt first met Neville Hoskins when he gave the Nottinghamshire history lecture in November 2000, shortly after completing a PhD thesis on the 4th Duke of Newcastle, at the start of what was then a temporary lectureship in history at the University of Nottingham. It was particularly fitting, therefore, that Richard should come back to the Society, at his silver jubilee at Nottingham, to deliver a lecture which commemorated the centenary of Neville’s birth.
Richard returned to the 4th Duke of Newcastle as his subject for this presentation but was able to deliver many fresh insights from his latest booklength project studying the Duke’s ownership of the Hafod estate, close to Aberystwyth in Wales, between 1832 and 1846. Using Newcastle’s diaries and papers, which Richard has now edited across four volumes (including a Record Series edition in 2003), the audience was taken on a journey which encompassed the whole life-cycle of Newcastle’s purchase, ownership, improvement and sale of the estate. Richard argued that, contrary to earlier accounts, Newcastle did not buy Hafod as a refuge from political controversy, but because of its fame as a picturesque landscape. Hafod had been made famous by Thomas Johnes, a gentleman scholar whose family had amassed a fortune through shrewd investments and land exchanges. It emerged in discussion after the lecture that Johnes’ banker was one of the Smith family of Nottingham and, when Hafod placed him in financial difficulties, Johnes contracted to sell the reversion on the estate to Thomas Claughton, the one-time purchaser of Newstead Abbey from Lord Byron.
Further connections with Nottinghamshire were revealed in Richard’s lecture, arising from Newcastle’s development of Hafod using personnel and ideas from Clumber, and revealing the Duke’s interest in livestock breeding, land drainage and animal husbandry. These showed a more flattering side to Newcastle, far removed from the political controversies for which he is usually remembered. The audience was also given insights into Richard’s travels around the Hafod estate including the formidably deep waterfall at Devil’s Bridge. The question and answer session revealed members’ appreciation and interest in the lecture, which may encourage members to visit the area for themselves. Anyone interested in reading the full result of Richard’s work should look out for his book, published by the South Wales Record Society in an attractively produced paperback edition at an affordable price.
David Hoskins