Cowbridge History Society talk route (plus Cowbridge u3a History Group)

Date: 2026-10-26 (skills harvest 17:07). Pages read in full today unless marked.

What the society is (read at source)

• Registered charity 1094061, run by volunteers, "about 90 members", serves Cowbridge and surrounding villages. Objectives include promoting local history "via a series of talks and exhibitions", research and publishing, Charter Day (13 March 1254), and a public local-study room.
• Monthly talks: FIRST FRIDAY of the month, 7:30 pm, Maendy Hall, Cowbridge United Free Church, The Broad Shoard, CF71 7AQ. Visitors pay £2; membership £10/yr. Members get a quarterly newsletter and the society's publications at a discount.
• 2026-27 programme is already full through May 2027 (Oct: Iolo Morganwg and the Druids; Nov: The Great Flood 1607; Dec: Iolo Morganwg: Life after Death; Jan: diary of William Thomas c.1727-1795; Feb: Turner in the Vale; Mar: Barbara Gamage, Coity heiress; Apr: Cowbridge in WW1; May AGM 7 May 2027 + Edwardian Cardiff talk). So the realistic slot is the 2027-28 programme (Oct 2027 onward).
• The programme leans hard on Vale/Glamorgan estate, gentry and 18th-19th century records: exactly the register a Great House Farm records talk fits.
• Programme Secretary is a named committee role (membership page). Correspondence goes via the Secretary: [address kept in the project workspace], [number kept in the project workspace].
• History Room, Old Hall, High Street CF71 7AH, open most Wednesday mornings 10:00-12:00 in term. Almost all its archive is on People's Collection Wales (that platform is a separate skill; do not duplicate).
• The society also offers talks and guided walks TO organisations (not individuals) by prior arrangement: it is a speaker source for other clubs, so a good relationship here feeds the Rotary/Probus/u3a circuit.
• Publications list: 15 local titles priced £3-£10, sold by the Treasurer and in the History Room (e.g. "A Journey down the Thaw Valley" 2020 £10; "Cowbridge and District 1860-1930" 2024 £6). Shows the audience buys local-history print at £3-£10.

Cowbridge u3a History Group (read at source)

• 3rd Thursday monthly, 10:00, Lesser Hall, Cowbridge Town Hall (green door, east side). Talks "last about an hour", by outside speakers and members, "many with a Welsh flavour". Group fee £10/yr covers speakers and room hire; visitors £2.
• Recent topic: St Donat's Castle (Jan and Nov 2025). Daytime, older audience; different people from the Friday-evening society, so it is a second Cowbridge slot, not a duplicate. (General u3a mechanics are in u3a-speaker-circuit-local-history.md; this is the Cowbridge-specific route.)

Cardiff Civic Society (checked, skip for talks)

• Home page read today: posts are planning and campaigning (local development plan hearings, Bute Park, historic buildings at risk). No current talk programme visible; /about-us 404s; a Facebook group snippet mentions occasional £5 evening events (not checked). Verdict: not a talk route now. Possible later angle: its "historic buildings at risk" campaign as a place to share the free edition's demolition-record chapter, owner's GO only.

How to do it (steps)

1. Wait for the deck + handout (shared-talk-deck-table-handout.md) to exist and be tested once at a smaller venue.
2. Draft ONE short email to the Secretary, for the Programme Secretary, offering a talk for the 2027-28 programme: title, 50-60 min, 2-line speaker bio, the record sources used, no fee (expenses only), slides + projector need. Put it in HubSpot as a draft task; send nothing without the owner's GO.
3. Separately draft to the Cowbridge u3a History Group contact (via the u3a site group email) for a daytime slot; can be sooner because u3a groups book closer in.
4. Offer the History Room a free copy/QR card of the free edition for its reading shelf (ask, do not assume).
5. After any talk: Jodee Blanco's "catalytic outreach" ask (which other groups book speakers?) and log in HubSpot.

Numbers (honest)

• 90 members, £2 visitor fee, £10 sub, 8 talks/yr (BALH listing snippet gives eight; BALH page 403'd, so "eight" is not checked; the events page shows 8 evening talks Oct-May plus Charter Day).
• No attendance or sales-per-talk figures published. Treat as reputation + list-building.

How we apply it to Cedwyn

• Fits the programme's estate/gentry/survey register; keep it record-led, no accusations about named people, no banned words, the owner is never named in public copy.
• Last slide + handout QR: cedwyn.bucklerfamily.estate/ebooks/?utm_source=cowbridge-history&utm_medium=talk (free edition first, bundle second).
• Repeat bar: 20 attendees or 5 sign-ups or 1 sale per talk.

Sources

• cowbridgehistorysociety.org (home), /events.php, /membership.php, /contact-us.php, /learn-with-us.php, /publications.php (all read 2026-10-26)
• cowbridge.u3asite.uk (read 2026-10-26)
• cardiffcivicsociety.org (read 2026-10-26)
• balh.org.uk (403; snippet only, not checked)
• ingramspark.com (Jodee Blanco, updated 1 Apr 2026; catalytic outreach)

Raw Markdown: cowbridge-history-society-talk-route.md · version and changes: changelog · machine index: agents.json