Wednesday 5th February. This month it’s our AGM and we will be hoping to install a new chairman.   Our acting chairman, Patrick Maloney, has been doing a sterling job since Eric Walter stepped down in September. He has also volunteered to carry on in the post and I’m sure he will continue his good work.  After the formalities, there will be a presentation summarising the project work we have been carrying out over the past year. This includes the research and site surveying of both the Kirkless and Pingot sites. We hope to be doing further work on these sites and this will be explained in the presentation.

Wednesday 4th December. This month we have Richard Sivill, a local historian, who will be giving us a talk on the Kirkless Hall Coal & Cannel Company which developed into the Ironworks eventually becoming the huge Wigan Coal and Iron Company. This will be really helpful to us as we continue our investigations on this site. In October I reported on our progress (see Newsletter 167) and hopefully, when the vegetation dies down, we will be able to return to continue our survey.

Wednesday 6th November. Norman Redhead from the GMAAS has agreed (at short notice) to give us an update on the Roman Archaeology of Greater Manchester. It’s 5 years ago since Norman came last to tell us about the archaeology of Roman Manchester. Since then there has been a number of significant discoveries include the Roman Altar found in excavations on Great Jackson Street in Manchester.  Norman will also be able to tell us about the section of Roman road recently uncovered in Eccles. This is the Manchester to Wigan road and the new section was discovered not far from the section we helped to uncover in Ellesmere Park in 2005 (see Newsletter 85)

Wednesday 2nd October. This month we have Paul Kenyon from the Latham Park Trust who will be giving us a talk on The History of Latham from Pre-Historic times to Present. This will include recent finds from the Bronze-age site at Duttons Farm and the Latham House site were the famous siege took place in the Civil War.

Wednesday 4th September. No meeting in August – our next meeting, in September, will be a talk by Derek Winstanley on the The Daglish/Clarke Railway. In the 18th century wagonways were built to take coal from the many coalfields around Wigan down to the River Douglas. This particular one was used to transport coal from the Winstanley estate, through Orrell, down to the river at Crooke. But to do this Clarke had to build a stone viaduct at the Pingot to carry the railway over the valley, the first of its type in the world. This year also celebrates 200 years since Daglish built his famous “Yorkshire Horse” to run on the railway – this early steam locomotive predated Stephen’s Rocket by more than a decade. Derek is a local historian who now lives in America but is still passionate about the history of Wigan and therefore it promises to be a great talk.

Wednesday 3rd July. This month we have another regular, Bill Shannon from Lancashire Archaeological Society. In previous visits he’s given us talks on early depictions of Hadrian’s Wall and Maps before Ordinance Survey. This time he will be presenting some interesting Disputed Maps from Tudor Lancashire. Always gives a great talk.

Wednesday 5th June. Ron Cowell is Curator of Prehistoric Archaeology at Liverpool Museum and came along and tell us about his remarkable discoveries in recent excavations on a site near Sefton on Merseyside. The site, which is called Lunt Meadows, is on farmland near the River Alt which is being converted into a nature reserve. Ron’s excavations have revealed Mesolithic settlement dating from 5800 BC. What is remarkable however is that Ron believes he may have found evidence for dwellings. If true, this would be very rare evidence that these nomadic hunter-gatherers were making permanent or semi-permanent settlements. The excavations are still continuing and Ron’s latest discovery is a platform of wooden branches (some of the branches have even been split) which he thinks may have been used as a landing stage on the water’s edge.