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The Friends of Czech Heritage: keeping you informed about our activities

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WORKING PARTIES OF 2019

PJ Gatehouse cR.Harrison

The Friends held two very productive working parties at Červený Dvůr in South Bohemia at the end of May and beginning of June. The numbers were small but sometimes this can be an advantage, especially when doing semi-skilled tasks, as we were. The project was centred around the reconstruction of the two gatehouses, which formerly guarded the main c...

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19.06.19 THE FRIENDS' VISIT TO WINCHESTER

St Cross cCeluici

The first stop was the Hospital of St Cross and Almshouse of Noble Poverty, where we first viewed the Chapel with its remarkably intact Norman architecture. After coffee sitting outside the Hundred Men’s Hall the group enjoyed a tour of the Great Hall of the Hospital led by Barbara Peacock, one of the founders of The Friends. Lunch was at The Bell ...

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Lecture 04.02.20 'From the village to the city: urbanisation in Slovakia 1896-1972'

Most SNP Detail cDDima

In his talk, Dr Lorman explored how Slovak culture was initially characterised by its rural quality and alienation from the beginnings of mass industrialisation and urbanisation in Hungary (exemplified by the 1896 millennial celebrations in Budapest). He examined how Slovak national identity was then substantially (but not entirely) transformed by ...

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Lecture 05.11.19 'Emperor Rudolf II Collector & Patron of the Arts & Sciences'

Heintz Rudolph II

Under Rudolf II Prague again became the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Following the example of his Habsburg ancestors, he assembled an exceptional collection of works of art for which the imperial palace on the Hradčany was adapted. He patronised painters, sculptors, goldsmiths who flocked to Prague, and also men of learning including Tycho Bra...

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Lecture 14.05.19 'The Royal Collection in Three Dimensions: Adventures of a Sculpture Cataloguer'

SirJMarsdenMay2019 cFoCH

Sir Jonathan Marsden gave a talk at the Embassy of the Czech Republic on Tuesday 14th May 2019, entertaining the guests with stories from behind  the scenes of the Royal Sculpture Collection.  He presented some of the lessons learned from working on a catalogue raisonné of European sculpture in the Royal Collection to be published by...

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Britain and Bohemia in the Fifteenth Century: The English Struggle Against the Hussite Movement

050321 MarkWhelan cFoCH

FRIENDS' LECTURE: BRITAIN AND BOHEMIA IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY On 5th March 2019 Dr. Mark Whelan, an historian of late medieval and early modern Germany and Central Europe who is currently working at King’s College, London, gave a lecture explaining how and why the English kings and senior clerics became involved in the early-fifteenth-century stru...

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The Friends' working party at Vizovice in Moravia, September 2018

Vizovice Small cRadekLinner

The project that we undertook at the Château of Vizovice in the week 8 - 15 September consisted of taking down an unstable brick boundary wall in the park, which had been rebuilt before the Velvet Revolution. It was set on a stone base, which had also collapsed in places. We cleaned all the bricks ready for reuse and rebuilt sections of the stone b...

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Friends' Lecture: A Celebration of Czechoslovak Culture in Wartime Britain - An Illustrated Talk by Jana Buresova

Buresova cFoCH

A CELEBRATION OF CZECHOSLOVAK CULTURE IN WARTIME BRITAIN On 9th October 2018 Dr. Jana Burešová of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies at the University of London gave a talk at the Czech Embassy on the ways in which both Czech and German-speaking exiles from Czechoslovakia during the Second World War acted to promote knowledge...

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Friends' Lecture - Prague and Innsbruck: the cultural patronage of the Archduke Ferdinand II. A lecture by Caroline Cannon-Brookes

PJamieson CCannon Brookes080119SMALL

On 8th January 2019 the art historian Caroline Cannon-Brookes gave a fascinating lecture in the Czech Embassy, London, about the life of Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand II (1529- 1595) and the collections amassed by him. Born the second son of the future Emperor Ferdinand I and Anne of Bohemia, he was Regent of Bohemia for twenty years in the middle of...

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FRIENDS' WORKING PARTY The historic mill at Polnička, Žďár nad Sázavou

MillPolnickaZdar1 cMSteibelt

The full extent of this project became apparent only as the work proceeded. We knew we were to clean out a disused mill and our combined team of Czech and UK volunteers spent a week clearing dirt and rubbish, which had lain undisturbed since the mill was last used in 1957. There was a tragic tale as the last miller was arrested and imprisoned by th...

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