SPIRE UNIVERSITY OF THE THIRD AGE       Charity Ref. 400/379/98

PRESS RELEASE SPIRE U3A

The March meeting of Spire U3A was held at Harnham Memorial Hall. The winter addition of 'U3A News' was out as well as the bimonthly Spire Newsletter and the AGM agenda that takes place in April when Group Leaders will have exhibits or talk about their groups.

These coffee mornings, held on the second Monday of each month, are not only a way of meeting other members but also finding out everything that is going on in Spire and also the other two Salisbury U3As such as coach trips.

One of these is the Science and Technology group whose next meeting will be held in the Hall, at 10am on March 27th and will be a lecture on the Jurassic coast by Annette Harris, a geologist who runs a group on the subject for Salisbury U3A.  This will be followed by an Audio Visual presentation of this World Heritage site.
On the following day March 28th there will be another joint meeting, Archaeology Group, by Jane Harcourt about the recent archaeology of Lacock.

The Talk was by Dr Gosling entitled 'Salisbury in the First Millennium'.  He began by describing that Harnham would have a church built of wood and known as a field church.  Across the River Avon would be Burcombe with an Anglo Saxon field church. Salisbury would not exist; only Fisherton so called, as it was a fishing village, with St Clements Church, the graveyard of which is still there.

At Milford there was a large church called St Martins the west end of which is out of line with the rest of the church now.  The road from Wilton lay between Fisherton and Milford Street, over the hill to Winchester.
The country belonged to the king but the Bishop had the right to take all the money from the area in his stewardship. He continued in this way giving an insight into how our area was formed by events during the first millennium.

Wessex's geography was governed by taxation.  The King and his retinue collected taxes by riding round Wessex.  And, conveniently, 25 miles separated the towns or one days ride apart.  At each town he would collect money and eat heartily at the town's expense.

For membership enquires: 01722 321731

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Contact: Sheila Read 01722 501218