Meetings, Events and Conferences
The highlights of each year are without doubt our annual residential
conferences, held each spring, though we also hold a smaller informal one
day meeting in Newbury each September. Our residential conferences continue
to be remarkably successful events.
The 2012 Annual BSS Conference will be held at
The Cheltenham Chase Hotel, roughly midway between Cheltenham
and Gloucester, from Friday April 13th to Sunday April 15th
2012.
The conference is open to both BSS members and non-members alike.
The Cheltenham Chase offers a very high level of
comfort and convenience and is once again completely self-contained with
lectures, meals and accommodation all under the one roof and with all
bedrooms having a TV, a safe and coffee/tea facilities. The hotel has
lifts to all floors and delegates may use the hotel's leisure and spa
facilities and the swimming pool.
| We are delighted to announce that BSS
Member Professor John Heilbron, Emeritus
Professor of the History of Science and Vice-Chancellor Emeritus
at the University of California, Berkeley will deliver the 2012
Andrew Somerville Memorial Lecture on “Traces of history
at the Pope’s Gnomon”. John is the author of that
excellent and scholarly work, The Sun in the Church:
cathedrals as solar observatories. |
The Society has reserved an allocation of bedrooms at a special rate
which can only be secured until 27th February 2012.
Booking forms and payment should therefore be received by the conference
organiser on or before that date. Bookings made after that
date will be subject to availability.
A Booking Form for the Conference was included as an insert with
both the
September and December BSS Bulletins, but a downloadable booking form, further details about the Conference,
details of some of the papers that have already been offered, and
general information about the Cotswolds area of England, can all be
found on our special conference web page here.
We can now accept payment by PayPal and to help cash flow, post-dated payment by
sterling cheque (but only when paying by a sterling cheque dated no
later than 27th. February 2012) is again being accepted; so do please book now rather
than wait until the last minute!
We look forward to meeting you at the conference.
The 2011 BSS Conference 29 April – 1 May 2011 Wyboston Lakes
In 2011 the BSS Conference was held at the Robinson
Executive Centre in the rural setting of Wyboston Lakes near the quaint
market town of St Neot’s in Cambridgeshire. In contrast to
University accommodation, Wyboston Lakes offered lectures, dining and
sleeping all within the one building and with the comfort of an hotel.
A few more details
about the 2011 conference and the results of our delegate questionnaire
can be found
here.
In 2010 we held our annual Conference at the University of Exeter
in the
lovely county of Devon. The sun shone, the venue was very comfortable,
the food excellent and very positive comments have been received from
delegates about the whole conference. The Saturday afternon dial tour
managed to get to see no fewer than seven church dials over a 50 mile coach
trip.
For those who might be interested to see a clip about the dial tour,
responses from delegates and see other pictures, see
here .
Our conferences bring together members and guests from all over the world to
listen to lectures, look at objects that members bring along and enjoy good
food at the same time as making new and renewing old, friendships. The
lecture programme is very broad with at least one lecture from an academic
or national expert, while other talks range through many aspects of
dialling.
Sundial enthusiasts are very good at exchanging information, and a major
parallel activity at the conferences are the many displays of dials, models,
photographs, equipment to determine the orientation of walls, etc, all
brought along by members. If you want hands-on experience of designing
dials, this is where to come.
Whilst the annual residential conferences are our main social event, the one
day events, held in September near Newbury, Berkshire, also attract members
from far and wide. The Newbury meetings are low cost informal meetings where
ideas are exchanged, exhibits brought along and added-to by 10 minute talks
by members.
Another successful form of social function for the Society has been that of
organised tours. We have already enjoyed visits to Scotland, Wales,
Cornwall, France Italy, Austria and Germany and this year we organised a
very successful one to East Anglia. All tours are organised by one or more
of our members or by the host country's own sundial society. We often manage
to get to see dials in locations that the general public could not normally
see. The tours are nicely balanced so that members don't suffer from 'dial
indigestion', but have plenty of fine food and wine as well!
The North American Sundial Society (NASS) also organises annual conferences
and tours which several of our members have attended and highly recommend.
If you're interested, please follow this
link.
