Events
Our next meeting
Friday 28 August 2026
Educating the Navy since 1863
Dr Jane Harrold
Curator of Britannia Museum, Britannia Royal Naval College
The Royal Navy has been training its officers at Dartmouth since 1863, when the wooden warship HMS Britannia was moored in the river and turned into a floating school. HMS Hindostan joined her the following year to take the overflow of new recruits. It was another four decades before the cadets came ashore. Edward VII laid the foundation stone in March 1902, and the first of them moved into the building above the town in September 1905.
Dr Jane Harrold is Curator of the Britannia Museum at the college and co-author, with Dr Richard Porter, of its illustrated history, published for the centenary in 2005 with a foreword by the Duke of Edinburgh.
Her talk follows the line from those hulks on the Dart to the officers passing out today, by way of the cadets who went on to become kings, and the summer of 1939 when Princess Elizabeth was introduced to a young Prince Philip of Greece.
- Venue
- The Palace Theatre, Palace Avenue, Paignton
- Time
- 10.00am for a prompt start at 10.30am
- Admission
- £4 members · £5 non-members, including a coffee
Our next meeting
Friday 25 September 2026
At Your Convenience
Dr Kevin Dixon
Author of Torquay: A Social History
The modern public convenience arrived with the Great Exhibition of 1851, where the plumber George Jennings installed lavatories in the Crystal Palace that cost a penny to use and gave the language its politest euphemism. London opened its first public toilets the year after. Torquay, which looked to the capital for the visitors it hoped to attract, was among the first towns to follow.
It had good reason to. The town had almost doubled in ten years, from 5,982 people in 1841 to 11,474 in 1851, and in 1849 sixty-six of them died of cholera and dysentery in the space of six weeks, most in the poorest districts. What came next was a century of building, then a quieter century of closing down. Brunswick Square, Castle Circus and Lucius Street have all gone.
Dr Kevin Dixon's talk is light-hearted and illustrated. It takes in what people did before there were toilets at all, how the private and the public convenience each evolved, and why for so long women had so much less access than men that the limit it put on their movement around a town earned a name of its own, the urinary leash.
- Venue
- The Palace Theatre, Palace Avenue, Paignton
- Time
- 10.00am for a prompt start at 10.30am
- Admission
- £4 members · £5 non-members, including a coffee
Our next event
Wednesday 7 October 2026 · evening
In the Wake of Drake
Colonel John Blashford-Snell CBE
Explorer, soldier and author
At the invitation of Emperor Haile Selassie, in 1968 the British Army commissioned him to select, train and lead a sixty-strong expedition to make the first descent of the Blue Nile. He went on to make the first vehicle crossing of the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia in 1971 and 1972, and to explore almost the whole 2,700 miles of the Zaire, now the Congo, in 1974 and 1975. More than a hundred expeditions have followed.
He founded the Scientific Exploration Society in 1969. Under the patronage of the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles, he led Operation Drake from 1978 to 1980, taking four hundred young people from twenty-seven nations to work alongside scientists in sixteen countries aboard the brigantine Eye of the Wind. Operation Raleigh followed, and between 1984 and 1992 more than ten thousand young people from fifty countries took part.
He was appointed CBE in 2019 for services to scientific research overseas and to young people in the UK. His talk covers Operation Drake and Operation Raleigh and a number of his other expeditions, with plenty of highly humorous stories, and is followed by a question and answer session.
- Venue
- The Palace Theatre, Palace Avenue, Paignton
- Time
- Doors open 5.30pm for a 6.00pm start
- Tickets
- £15 members · £20 non-members · £15 veterans · £10 under 18
Tickets are available only through the Palace Theatre box office, on 01803 665800.
Torbay Civic Society
Calendar
An inspiring programme of talks for 2026
Monthly meetings are held on the last Friday of each month at 10.00am, at the Palace Theatre, Palace Avenue, Paignton. A few special events fall on other dates, noted below.
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28AugustFriday
Educating the Navy since 1863
Dr Jane Harrold
Curator of Britannia Museum, Britannia Royal Naval College
-
6SeptSunday
50th anniversary
Celebration Tea
Marking fifty years of the Torbay Civic Society.
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13SeptSunday
Blue plaque unveiling
Blue Plaque to Agatha Christie
To be unveiled by her grandson, Mathew Prichard. The plaque marks her service as a nurse for the British Red Cross during the First World War, from 1914 to 1918.
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25SeptFriday
At Your Convenience
Dr Kevin Dixon
Torbay's lav affair with the smallest room in the house
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7OctWednesday
Evening event
Colonel John Blashford-Snell CBE
One of the world's most famous explorers. Founder of Operation Drake, Operation Raleigh and the Scientific Exploration Society.
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30OctFriday
An Auctioneer's Life
Stephen Large
Auctioneer
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2NovMonday
Blue plaque unveiling
Blue Plaque to Agatha Christie
Marking her honeymoon night at The Grand Hotel. To be unveiled by Alison MacMillan LVO DL JP.
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27NovFriday
Supporting the Fleet in Torbay and Plymouth in the Age of Fighting Sail
Bob Mark
Chair, Britannia Trust
-
7DecMonday
Social
Christmas Lunch
Also in the diary. The 2027 Annual General Meeting will be held on Wednesday 24 March 2027 at 9.30am.
All members and guests welcome.
Save the dates. We look forward to welcoming you. Further details will be announced nearer each event.
Membership
£10 per person
£15 joint membership
per year
Monthly meetings
Refreshments available
£4 members · £5 non-members
payable at the door