Can you guess the mystery item from Spalding Gentlemen’s Society’s cabinet of curiosities?
Last month’s mystery object from the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society Cabinet of Curiosities was a scrivener’s pricking wheel.
Paul Matten, of Spalding, correctly identified the item explaining: “It was used for marking out even-spaced lines on documents. You lay the two long edges together and run the wheel down the side, leaving prick holes, then use a ruler to scribe the document.”
Well done Paul, you win two free tickets to any of the society’s forthcoming lectures (details below).
Who can identify this month’s item? If you can just email your answer with your full name and address to outreach@sgsoc.org by the closing date of Tuesday, June 25. The answer and next month’s object from Spalding Gentlemen’s Society’s Cabinet of Curiosities will appear on Tuesday, July 9.
The first correct answer out of the hat will win a pair of tickets to any of the Society’s forthcoming lectures.
Spalding Gentlemen’s Society is one of the oldest learned societies, founded in 1710. The museum in Broad Street, Spalding, is open to all from Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm. Entry is free, just ring the doorbell.
Inside is a cornucopia of items to inform, educate and amuse - of local, national and international interest.
Here are details of the forthcoming lecture season. All events take place at Broad Street Methodist Church, Spalding, at 7.30pm, admission £5.
Friday, September 27: David Pickering, Intergen - the role large power plants play within the UK.
Friday, October 11: Jeremy Hunter, UNESCO award-winning photo-journalist - dictators, despots and tyrants in the contemporary world.
Friday, October 25: Dr James Wright FSA, Buildings Archaeologist Triskele Heritage - historic building myth busting.
Friday, November 8: Dr Charles Nelson VMM FLS, renowned botanist and author - the truly honest, ingenious and modest Mr Mark Catesby FRS.
Friday, November 22: Prof Kate Giles, University of York - the wall paintings of Pickering Church. Their discovery, restoration and meaning.
Friday, December 6: Paul Scott, Sir Joseph Banks Society - Sir Joseph Banks - agrarian to industrialist.
Friday, January 10: Louisa Evans, Talbot House Association - Talbot House Poperinge 1915.
Friday, January 24: Dr Dustin Frazier Wood, University of Roehampton - the Society’s “Original Collection”, 1710-1814.
Friday, February 7: Dr Angela Thornton, University of Nottingham - mind uploading: science fiction or science?
Friday, February 21: Stuart Orme, Curator at The Cromwell Museum - barbers and bloodletting: medicine and surgery in the later Middle Ages.
Friday, March 7: Prof Neil Christie, University of Leicester - recording a changing landscape: The drawings of Samuel Buck in Lincolnshire in the context of the 1720s-40s
Friday, March 21: Dr Andrew Birley, The Vindolanda Trust - Vindolanda and Magna, two sides of a frontier in transition.
