SARUM U3A
The monthly Coffee Morning of Sarum U3A was held in its usual venue of St Francis Church Hall on Wednesday 15 June.
After the initial socialising over coffee, in the absence of the Chairman, the Membership Secretary took the chair and announced that membership for this year now stood at 246 and that there was a steady flow of new members joining. Information from the floor included a request for members of the Strollers group to meet later to discuss their next walk and that there was to be 2 lectures on Trafalgar at Portsmouth Dockyard.
The morning’s speaker was Dr Denise Allen who was speaking on “Roman Glass”. She had previously spoken most interestingly on Pompeii and Tunisia and members were looking forward to an interesting talk. They were not disappointed. Dr Allen’s talk was well illustrated with slides and examples of replica glass vessels made by glass blowers who are testing archaeologists’ theories on how glass was made by the Romans. Glass vessels were first made by a variety of methods in a variety of colours in 1500BC intending to imitate vessels made in precious and semi-precious stones. Blown glass started around 50BC spreading from Syria across the whole of Europe, including Britain. Since there are no remains of either the furnaces or tools used, glass blowers from near Andover have tried to test theories put forward by archaeologists as to how and with what equipment the Romans could achieved such beautiful and varied results. Dr Allen had taken part in these experiments some of which were televised for programmes such as “Time Team”.
Dr Allen touched on the development of window glass which could show very clearly that glass never completely solidifies but can to a small extent still flow.
Dr Allen was thanked by Phyll Babb for her talk. The applause and, following the talk, the groups round the table of replicas and additional photographs showed how interesting the talk had been for members.
The next Coffee Morning will be on 20 July (10.00 for 10.30) when Tony Pinder will speak on “The History and Preservation of the Fovant Badges”. New members are always welcome.
