Previous Events
David Clarke - ‘Sheffield’s Mysterious Tunnels and Associated Ghosts’
Monday 31st October 2016 7:30pm
Halloween Special Event
Dr Clarke has been collating stories about the mysterious underground tunnels that, according to folklore, are supposed to link various historic places in the city centre including the Castle, Manor Lodge, Cathedral, Old Queen's Head, etc. Some of these tunnel legends also have ghost stories attached to them.
Free glass of wine
Tickets £5.00 *Please book your ticket in advance using THIS LINK to guarantee a place at this event as there will only be a very limited number of tickets available on the door.
Anna de Lange - ‘Portland Works’
Wednesday 19th October 2016
7:30
Anna will tell us the story of Portland Works, which was recently saved from conversion into flats. It is a surviving example of an 'integrated cutlery works' where all the processes took place on one site, and is still in use by metal tradespeople. It's important too because the very first stainless steel knives were made there in 1914.
Entry free, but please arrive early to be sure of a place.
Gareth Jones ‘The History of the Ken Hawley Tool Collection’
Wednesday 21st September 2016
7:30
A story of how one man’s enthusiasm and dedication has grown into an internationally important material record of tool making, cutlery manufacture and silversmithing from Sheffield, together with complementary material from Britain and the rest of the world. This collection of over 100,000 artefacts is unique in that it combines finished items and work in progress to illustrate how things were made. Together with published catalogues, archival material, pictures, photographs, tapes and films, it records the development of many of Sheffield's manufacturing processes and products and the skills of the workpeople involved.
The talk will be followed by a brief ‘tool handling’ session.
Entry free, but please arrive early to be sure of a place.
Isis Moray & Lost Garden
Saturday 
August 20 2016
7.30pm
Isis Moray is living and working in Sheffield as an artist and musician. Using a drum machine, loop pedal and vocal effects, she creates ethereal, dark-ambient music, with chunky bass and beats. Isis Moray will be creating both a visual and sound performance, expressing through her work a darker side of the feminine. Loops, layers and delay merge with deep bass and catchy beats. Her performance will bring you a delicate yet bold ambiguity. With ethereal psytronica and hypnotising visuals that can get a room dancing, and does.
website
Lost Garden are a duo consisting of Nick Robinson & Jan Gilhooley using electronics, loops & guitar to create both spacious and dense dark ambient textures that you ill find difficult to dance to!
website
Tickets £4 - book here
DAS RAD - Robinson Archer & Dinsdale
Friday June 24 2016 7.30pm
Music at Bishops' House presents a first outing for this new trio of diverse & creative Discus Records artists,
Nick and Steve will perform solo sets, then the trio will close the evening.
Nick Robinson
A former member of Sheffield bands as diverse as Typhoon Saturday, Dig Vis Drill, They Must Be Russians and the Comsat Angels, Nick has for many years offered a range of soundscapes and other looping guitar pieces. Using just the guitar and a laptop, he takes you via the power of improvisation to distant planets. Nick most recent release is "Cotyledon" with his "Lost Garden" duo.
website
Martin Archer
Following an early career with 1980s jazz punk pell mellers Bass Tone Trap, followed by the fondly remembered and widely gigged Hornweb Sax Quartet, Martin disappeared into the recording studio for 15 years in 1994, from where he produced a series of highly acclaimed albums for his own Discus imprint. In recent years, as well as forging a several album creative partnership with veteran vocalist Julie Tippetts, Martin currently works with avant rock groups Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere and Combat Astronomy, 35 voice experimental music choir Juxtavoices,and most recently ten piece jazz group Engine Room Favourites, in which Martin revisits his AACM roots.
website
Steve Dinsdale
Steve Dinsdale plays keyboards and drums in the leading British electronic trio Radio Massacre International, who have released a plethora of albums over the last 20 years and played concerts in both Europe and America. He is also a member of Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere and Engine Room Favourites, and has several solo albums to his name.
website
Cost £5.00
Curious House - 22nd April to 8th May
*NOTE: Extended until the end of May!
Friday 22nd April marks the opening of a much anticipated art exhibition at Bishops' House. Thanks in particular to the hard work and determination of Bishops' House volunteer, PhD researcher and artist Caroline Claisse, Bishops' House will for two weeks host Curious House.
This Arts Council England sponsored project runs in tandem with Art Sheffield 2016 and features works in a variety of media created by four artists: Lyndall Phelps, Caroline, Rachel Emily Taylor and Louise Finney. Installations, to be found in different parts of the house, have been created in response to the house and its occupants.
The exhibition will also see Bishops' House opening during the week at unusual times - Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
For more information, please visit the project's own website: www.curioushouse.org ,
An evening of traditional and contemporary folk music
Friday April 22 2016
in the company of Pete Garratt, Ken Atkinson & Geoff Heppell three stalwarts of the local folk scene. Friday 22nd April at 7.30pm at Bishops’ House, Norton Lees Lane, Sheffield, S8 9BE Pete & Ken have been singing together for fifty years and run the highly successful and respected Beehive Folk Club at Harthill. Geoff sang with Bone Lazy and for years prior to that with the Cartwheel Folk Group who still perform together occasionally. Together the three provide solo and three-part harmony singing along with beautiful and accomplished guitar accompaniment.
Admission £7 including free raffle. Bring your own drinks.
To book a ticket please call Ken on 0114 2664206 or Ann on 0114 2748331
All profits will go to Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice
Helen Tookey & Sharron Kraus - Book/CD Launch
Saturday 21st May 2016 7.30
An evening of poetry and music to launch *If You Put Out Your Hand*: a collaboration between poet Helen Tookey and musician Sharron Kraus. The project takes inspiration from the natural world and our ways of responding to it. The poems’ settings are gardens, river valleys, hills, and at the same time the symbolic landscapes of the mind, of dream and memory. Sharron Kraus’s beautifully sparce music responds intuitively but precisely to the poems; word and sound interweaving to form a set of new collaborative pieces.
Originally from Leicester, Helen Tookey now lives in Liverpool. Her debut poetry collection *Missel-Child* (Carcanet, 2014) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection 2015.
Sharron Kraus is a singer, musician and composer based in Sheffield. Her work draws on traditional music and folklore as well as the natural world. Her recent solo album *Friends and Enemies; Lovers and Strangers* is a collection of songs inspired by the stories of the *Mabinogi*.
Entrance £6, Doors open 7.30 for 8pm start. Free glass of wine!
Valerie Bayliss - Building Schools for Sheffield
Wednesday June 22nd 2016
Sheffield was quick off the mark to provide elementary education after the 1870 Education Act, and the School Board was responsible for many fine school buildings. The talk looks at the way the Board was set up in Sheffield and at the building programme which has left us with one of the best surviving collections of these buildings in the country.
Peter Machan - 'Lords and Ladies of Hallamshire'
Monday May 23rd 2016
The story of the lords of the manor from the Norman Conquest to the 20th century; their homes, castles, parks and the larger than life stories of their lives and times. Includes the stories of the amazing Bess of Harwick, the Earl of Shrewsbury and their royal prisoner, Mary Queen of Scots.
Suzanne Bingham - 'The Rise and Fall of Workhouses'
Wednesday May 4th 21016
What were they really like? An examination of the local workhouse experience.
Howard Smith - 'The Snake Road'
Wednesday April 20th 2016
This talk explains why this most unusual former turnpike road came to be planned and built and why, though it was a feat of highway engineering, it was a commercial failure. Its history post-turnpike is covered up to the present day and its relevance to Sheffield's communications is examined. Copies of Howard Smith's book on 'The Snake Road' will also be for sale.
