Woking Centre
Trinity Church, Brewery Road, Woking, GU21 4LH
For map click hereCo-ordinator Chris Leech
Email: woking@wsfhs.orgSecond Thursday in month
The doors will open at 7.45pm and the meeting will start at 7.50pm.
2026
| Date | Doors Open | Start Time | Title | Speaker | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu | 8 Jan | 7.45 pm | 7.50 pm | Follow the Money | Sue Turner |
| Thu | 12 Feb | 7.45 pm | 7.50 pm | Indexing Root and Branch | Informal Meeting |
| Thu | 12 Mar | 7.45 pm | 7.50 pm | A Romany Lifestyle | David Rose and Geoff Burch |
| Thu | 14 May | 7.45 pm | 7.50 pm | Writing a One-place study of Pirbright | Richard Hartley |
| Thu | 11 Jun | 7.45 pm | 7.50 pm | Parish Chest Records | Sally Gardiner |
Forthcoming Meetings
January 8 2026
Sue Turner - Follow the MoneyFor family trees Wills can provide a lot of information about relatives, confirming or refuting what has been found and sometimes including interesting snippets that require further investigation. Sue's talk will look at how Wills show the money flowing within and between a set of families not always related by marriage and also at the Wills of two spinsters which provided information about their families that could not have been found any other way.
February 12
Informal Meeting - Indexing Root and BranchAn opportunity to help with a project to index the names appearing in articles in Root and Branch over the years. Work has been done to extract the names from some magazines but checking is needed. This evening we hope to progress some of this checking which will be done in groups of two or three and should be very straightforward and hopefully enjoyable. An evening of practical help which aims to produce this index useful to those wanting to know if previous issues might have mention of names that could be relevant to their research.
March 12
David Rose and Geoff Burch - A Romany LifestyleA joint talk. Gypsies, travellers and itinerant workers in the local area in days gone by. Where they made their camps, their work on farms, market gardens, hop picking, their ways and traditions. Vintage pictures from David 's collection and personal details from Geoff, whose mother was born into a gypsy family in Old Woking in 1918. Geoff has traced this side of his family's history and has uncovered some fascinating stories of several generations of how and where they lived and worked, both at Chobham and in and around Old Woking.
May 14
Richard Hartley - Writing a One-place study of PirbrightFor the last 5 years or so Richard Hartley has been writing a One-place study of Pirbright, a small Surrey village between Guildford and Woking. When complete the study will document the history of each of the 1,200-odd properties in the village, detailing the owners and occupants - where and when they lived, what they did for a living, who their families were, photos, interesting stories etc. In short, he's writing just about everything interesting he can find out about every Pirbright person in the past.
So far Richard is half way through the project and has published over 450,000 words and 1,800 images, which are available online. He'll talk about how he went about the project, his sources of information, the pitfalls and some of the time-saving tricks. He'll also offer advice to anyone considering a similar type of project.
June 11
Sally Gardiner - Parish Chest RecordsParish Chest records are an often under utilised source of local, social and family history. They go way beyond parish registers and provide an insight into parish life, mainly in the period 1600 to 1834 i.e. prior to modern civil records. Sally will guide through what you might expect to find e.g. how the parish functioned, how it was funded, what records were maintained, the roles people played and how the poor were helped during hard times. She will also outline how to access these records so that you can dive in and discover more about the life and times of your ancestors.