The Daresbury Lewis Carroll Society

Welcome to the Daresbury Lewis Carroll Society Website.

We are a friendly informal society with a passion for Lewis Carroll and his works. We meet twice a year in Daresbury Village Hall, or at least we did before 'lockdown', at meetings with guest speakers and take part in various Lewis Carroll related events across the area. 

The header shows a collage of scenes which can all be found in Daresbury  with the exception of the picture of a strangely dressed group of people which was taken at the opening of a Lewis Carroll related exhibition. On the left is a picture of part of a stained glass window which you will finf in Daresbury Church.  Next are a Cheshire cat which you'll find in a barn up the road from the church and and a weather vane which is just across the road from the cat. Finally you see the start of the Lewis Carroll Walk.

The Spring 23 Meeting of the Society

You can see all the articles from the Newsletter at Newsletter Spring 23.  Note that Selwyn Goodacre's tribute to Kenn Oultram, which we received too late to go into the paper version of the Newsletter, has been included.

The meeting took place on the 10th June in the usual Parish Rooms in Daresbury, next to the Ring O'Bells pub where members usually meet for lunch and a chat prior to attending the meeting.  Alas, because of the unseasonal heat the kitchen was closed and no food was available, so we had to make do with the biscuits and tea supplied in the meeting room.  Suffering from the early onset of malnutrition Stephen Martin gave us a fascinating talk on 'The Royal Connection with Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell' 

Sad News

Sadly since the Autumn meeting last year (2022) two long standing members of our society have passed away - Kenn Oultram and Margaret Tye

Kenn Outram was the founder of our society back in 1970 and passed away in March this Year. He was our  chairman for a  while and then, up until not so long ago, our active secretary.  He had been ill for some time and was a resident at a nursing home in Northwich where he passed away.  You can read more about Kenn and sone thoughts about him at Kenn Oultram.

Margaret Tye passed away in November last year.   She had been a member of the society almost fron the start an for many years had been the minutes secretary. She  had a wonderful collection of Lewis Carroll memorabila and artefacts.

You can read more about Margaret by following Margaret Tye.

New Articles

Keith Wright's Autumn 2011 Daresbury Chronicle is now completed as is the latest Newsletter. We will soon be starting on the Spring 2011 Daresbury Chronicle.  If you haven't already done so do take a look at  Keith Wright's article about Harry Furniss which is well worth a read.

You can also see other articles at New Articles.

Content

The various buttons in the menu above will take you through the website. Hopefully it's all fairly intuitive. Below is a bit more information about some of the pages and how our site is organised and works.  

Publications

Most of the content on this site will be found on these pages.  Here we are collecting all the articles published in the societies magazines since 2004. They are all indexed so you can use the Search button in the menu to see if we have anything on a topic you are interested in.  Not all the magazines are present however. So far we have added forty articles with over three hundered to go and expect to have it completed over the next twelve months or so. Do keep coming back to check on our progress.

There were two series of magazines - The Daresbury Chronicles and The Newsletter.

Cover 2019 10.JPGCover 2012 10.JPG

The Daresbury Chronicles were edited and produced by our  chairman at that time, Keith Wright, from  2004  until his death in 2016.  They contain a wealth of information about Lewis Carroll and about our organisation. 

The Newsletter, in its current form, has been produced each Spring and Autumn since 2015.

If you click on either of the covers shown here you will be taken to the articles published in the corresponding magazine.

New articles are added when they become available and then included in the appropriate magazine when it is published.

Some Snipets

The Next Meeting

The autumn meeting for the society is scheduled for Saturday 7th October at 2pm as usual, in the Parish Rooms Daresbury. 

No speaker has been booked at present,  we'll update this page as soon as we have a talk arranged.

George In Civvy Street

We've added an extract of the Lion and The Unicorn  dream sequence Geroge Formby's 1946 film "George in Civvy Street".  Click on the image of George as the March Hare with the Mad Hatter below to see it and got George in Civvy Street to read Stephen Martin's article.

External Links

All external links open in a popup window which appears at the top left of your screen. You can then resize it and scroll through it as normal. If you experience problems with these you may need to enable popups in your browser.

Videos

Alice In Wonderland.jpgIn amongst the articles you will find links to videos, TV programs etc. such as this link to Jonathan Millers Alice in Wonderland screened in 1966.  Just search for 'video' to find them all.

TV Programmes

Curiouser and Curiouser.pngThere are also links to the various iPlayers for interesting TV programmes. Such as this one to an episode of Secrets of the Museum, a series of programs about exhibitions and work at the Victoria and Albert museum.  In this program they follow the setting up of an ambitious exhibition about Alice In Wonderland.  At the heart of this exhibition is an immersive instillation bringing to life Jonathan Miller’s adaptation.  At the end of the program (54:15 minutes in) Jonathan Miller’s widow, son and granddaughters review the exhibition.

Panoramas

June West Kirby_thumb.jpgIn articles about some events, such as exhibitions, you can open up  an interactive panorama like the one above of June Lornie's exhibition of her Alice Paintings at Kirby Library. Just click on the image above to open one up.

Zoomable images

As you've probably discovered by now, a lot the images, such as the Lewis Carroll and The Daresbary Village Hall images  can be zoomed into  by clicking on them.Nearly all the images on this site work in this way. 

(The zoomed image can be closed by clicking on the "X" in the top right hand corner.if you're unfamilar with this)