Exhibition: History of the Bilton Grange Estate Sunday 13th September 2026
Following our success last year with our exhibition on “Second World War Bilton”, Bilton Historical Society are taking part again in “Heritage Open Days 2026”, England’s largest annual festival of history and culture.
This year our exhibition, “ History of the Bilton Grange Estate ”, is in Bilton Community Centre on Sunday 13th September, from 11 to 4 o’clock. It will cover the history and development of King Edward’s Drive and its surrounding streets, the Bilton Grange Estate, over a period of almost 250 years from the 1778 Enclosure Award to the present day.
This often-overlooked part of Harrogate fulfilled an important role in supporting the town’s exploitation of its mineral waters, in the early part of the 20th century, by accommodating the necessary large workforce for its hotels and essential services.
A description of the project and the estate is given in Newsletter 106 page 3
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The Annual General Meeting was held on 1st April 2026.
Please think about joining the committee because we have a vacancy for a Membership Secretary.
If you are interested please let us know through the Contact Us page.
The committee elected to serve for next year was: Chairman John Branson, Secretary Alan Gould, Membership Secretary Vacancy, Committee: Isabella Ladigus (Talks Secretary), Shirley Dunwell, Peter Barnes, Anne Richards and we welcomed Sandra Blyton as our new treasurer.
Bilton Historical Society Annual Report 2025/26
The society’s principal activities are: a study group, a programme of talks, publication of a newsletter and booklets and building up a collection of photographs of our area.
The study group meets on alternate Tuesday mornings with an average attendance of 8 and we had several visitors who are always welcome. The society has generated and collected much information relevant to Bilton’s history, and the study group is still progressing slowly on the long-term project to index, scan and store this information in digital form with the objective of making available a usable comprehensive database. A part of it, the 1939 Register of people, was shown at the September exhibition, and was very popular.
We have had a very interesting series of evening talks and with a slightly higher average attendance of 33. We have continued to use a projector and/or television screen at the start of each meeting to keep you informed of activities. One of the talks “We will Remember Them” was given by our secretary Alan. He repeated his talk to Bilton Grange URC and Bilton Ladies Forum. Our thanks go to Isabella for organising a varied programme and to Margaret and Ronie for refreshments.
In May we had a display of photos of street parties at the Community Centre VE Celebration. We made and displayed tags, giving details of those from Bilton who died in the war, on the railings outside the Centre. We were also invited to give a talk to the pupils of Richard Taylor School on the war and used the same display boards.
In the summer we were present at Bilton Library’s and the Community Centre’s open days. Anne continues running drop in sessions at the Bilton and Woodfield Community Library on the third Thursday of the month from 2pm to 4 pm. In September we had a very successful exhibition on “Second World War Bilton” in the war” as our contribution to the Harrogate local Heritage Open Days programme with 156 people attending.
Since the retirement of Keith Burton from editing the newsletter it has been done by members of the committee, and we are looking for someone to take over. We are very reliant on input from members and welcome any contributions. We are always looking for new snippets of information and articles on local history to include in the coming issues.
We are very grateful to Studio Harrogate for continuing to host the society’s website, and thanks are due to Alan Gould for his work as secretary and (temporary) treasurer, Isabella as Talks Secretary, Shirley, Anne and Peter as committee members. Alan has been doing the combined role of secretary and treasurer for a year and we will be welcoming Sandra next year who will be taking over the role of treasurer.
We were runners up in the two Community Centre Quiz evenings. We had a Christmas quiz in December’s newsletter and would have liked to have seen more entries.
There were 85 members this year. Thank you for your continuing support. We still would like to encourage younger people to join as the committee is ageing. We hope that recording the history of Bilton will be of interest to those who have recently retired and are looking for a mentally stimulating interest.
John Branson, Chairman
