The Friends of Czech Heritage: keeping you informed about our activities
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On Thursday 7th June 2018 after we met in the morning in the Marmaris Café, Chris Sumner, a landscape historian, took us on a guided tour of the Well Hall Pleasaunce opposite the café. Well Hall Pleasaunce was opened as a public garden jn 1933 and contains a rectangular moated island, the site of the long-demolished Well Hall, home in the 1520s of ...
Organised by The Friends, this was a unique opportunity to visit top historic sites in Bohemia and to meet the experts who look after them. Specialists from the NPÚ, the Czech National Heritage Institute, and others - accompanied us to Strahov Abbey, the Palace Gardens below Prague Castle, Konopiště Castle, the Château of Krásný Dvůr, Karlštejn Cas...
29th May 2018. Held in the Czech Embassy London, this was a hugely interesting lecture, full of little-known facts not only about the composer Dvořák but also the literary and the musical scene in Prague and the Empire in the 19th century. The title was 'Dvořák’s less familiar career: networking in the salons of Prague and the long road to operatic...
THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS Our Chairman Peter Jamieson is giving a talk in the 2018 Spring Lecture Series: 'Conservation in a Far-away Country: Responding to a Turbulent Past' , date changed to Tuesday 27th March due to severe weather. The SPAB website explains: "Founded in 2007, the Friends of Czech Heritage brings togethe...
LECTURE ON 30TH JANUARY 2018 As our first event in the newly refurbished Czech Embassy, Daniel Spička, an architect by training who has been much involved in restoration work in the Czech Republic, gave a very well illustrated talk on the six restored Baroque-style castle theatres that have survived out of the 41 built between 1700 and 1850. After ...
November 2017 - The Friends were pleased to see the Mauricovna at Červený Dvůr as the image on the opening web page of the UK National Trust's Overseas Working Holidays for 2018. Photograph by Amber Cloughton, participant in 2016. In the coming year The Friends are organising three working holidays: -Žďár nad Sázavou, the site of the UNESCO pilgrim...
The Friends were entertained on Thursday evening 26th October at the Embassy of Slovakia by Christine Sitwell, who gave a very interesting talk about the the relationship between the National Trust and the National Heritage Institute of the Czech Republic. Since the Velvet Revolution the two organisations have exchanged delegations, which has helpe...
The Friends of Czech Heritage again led volunteering to restore the park at the Château of Krásný Dvůr in North Bohemia. This is the second year the Friends have organised a week-long working party in this historic park, finishing on Friday 15th September. This year the group worked on uncovering the water supply to the Chinese pavilion, ...
The Friends' second working holiday of 2017 took place last week and was based in the Villa Stiassni, an example of Functionalism, designed for the wealthy textile industrialist Alfred Stiassny by the architect Ernst Wiesner in 1927. This large villa sits in a garden on an extensive sloped plot of land. It has beautiful views across the garden to t...
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC FOR THE FIRST TIME Following The Friends' working party in June last year, we were pleased to receive summertime photographs of the Lower Cemetery at Žďár nad Sázavou from Zbyněk Vintr, who managed the project there. The enclosure, designed built by the famous Baroque architect J. B. Santini-Aichel, was in fact never used for bur...
