All The next meeting of the Oxfordshire Family History Society will take place on Monday 25 October 2010 at the usual venue at Exeter Hall, Oxford Road, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1AB. Doors open at 7.15pm for coffee, help with both genealogy and computers, and the bookstall, exchange journals and the library. The subject of the talk is "The turbulent lifetime of Thomas Vachell", which will be presented by Tony Hadland. The subject of the talk, Thomas Vachell, was remarkable for two things : his extraordinarily long life, and his dogged refusal to conform to the Church of England. He lived under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I and James I, and thus spanned the whole Reformation era, from the first break with Rome to the Gunpowder Plot. The Vachell family claimed to be of Norman origin and were one of the most prominent in the Reading area. Their main seat was Coley Manor, close to the centre of Reading, where they had great influence. Thomas Vachell's father was MP for Reading and the commissioner responsible for overseeing demolition of the town's huge Benedictine Abbey. Yet, despite his father's enthusiastic involvement in King Henry's attack on the Roman church, Thomas became a recusant Catholic. Having inherited Coley Manor and spent a lot of money on it, he surrendered it to a Protestant nephew and moved to Ipsden, where his wife, a READE of Abingdon, held property. At one stage, Thomas was subjected to the highest recusancy fines in Oxfordshire – a county noted for its high rate of gentry recusancy. In this illustrated talk, Tony will trace Thomas Vachell's life in Oxfordshire and Berkshire, plotting it against the major events of his lifetime, tracing his involvement with contemporaries and looking at the places he frequented. He will even go on the trail of hidden treasure ! Our guest speaker Tony Hadland has been a member of OFHS for nearly thirty years. He is currently vice chairman of the society, and is editor of our journal, the "Oxfordshire Family Historian". He is an author, editor, occasional broadcaster and retired chartered building surveyor, who also had a training in architecture. He has written on Catholic recusancy in the Thames Valley and on many aspects of cycling history. He is currently working on a major history of the Raleigh bicycle company for a publisher in California. After retiring as operational risk manager of the property services department of a major bank, Tony went back to work as manager of the Vale & Downland Museum from 2004 to 2009. During that time, he took an active part in the Oxfordshire Museums Council, the Thames Valley Museums Group, and the Oxfordshire County Council Museums Liaison Group. Tony is chairman of the Alex Moulton Museum committee (Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire), an occasional advisor to the Museum of Computing (Swindon), and a volunteer at the Pendon Museum (Long Wittenham, Oxon) and the Vale & Downland Museum (Wantage, Oxon.) He is also a member of the Project Steering Group for the redevelopment and refurbishment of Abingdon County Hall Museum. For more about Tony Hadland, visit his website at _www.hadland.net_ (http://www.hadland.net) All members, potential members and their guests are welcome. For directions as to how to get to the Exeter Hall, please see :- _http://www.ofhs.org.uk/ExeterHall.html_ (http://www.ofhs.org.uk/ExeterHall.html) For a list of future OFHS meetings, please see :- _http://www.ofhs.org.uk/meetings.html_ (http://www.ofhs.org.uk/meetings.html) Any queries, please contact me off-list. Paul Gaskell Publicity Officer Oxfordshire Family History Society _www.ofhs.org.uk_ (http://www.ofhs.org.uk)