Upcoming Courses

This is a Branch Learning Circle: to register interest contact Branch Secretary Rhiannedd Pratley

Text 07876 717292   or email rhiannedd.pratley@wea.ac.uk  

Pay £7 contribution to Learning Circle costs in class

Jane Austen’s Grown-up Novel – Persuasion

WEA Tutor Adrian Eckersley

Jane Austen’s final text lacks none of the grace and wit of her earlier works, and is as intense a romance as them all; but it is also rich in perspectives on disappointment, on the passage of time, and on the nature of glamour.

Join our small, friendly group – come and study the nuance and detail of one of the finest novels in English

5 sessions March 4 to April 1  2025

Fee £42.00

For more information and to Enrol  click  HERE

Radical Songs Since 1800

with Ted Woodgate

Social, Political and Economic History

At The Reading Rooms, Billericay High Street, CM12 9AS

This is a branch Learning Circle: if you would like to join us please contact Billericay.branch@wea.ac.uk

We ask for donations please to cover the session, room hire and refreshments.

History of Little Baddow and Elm Green School during and just after the War

Long standing resident of Little Baddow, Dr Michael Tubbs, recounts his memories of the village before and shortly after WW1 and its development from a farming-community with four shops to its current state. Also, we will learn of the history and development of the successful Elm Green School, founded by the speaker’s mother who was its principal for 30 years until her death in 1974.

This is a branch Learning Circle: to register interest contact Branch Secretary Rhiannedd Pratley

Text 07876 717292  or email  rhiannedd.pratley@wea.ac.uk  

Pay £7 contribution to Learning Circle costs in class

Poetry- Does It Have To Rhyme?

with Alan McFadden

     Understanding, listening to, and enjoying poetry.

At The Reading Rooms, Billericay High Street, CM12 9AS

This is a branch Learning Circle: if you would like to join us please contact Billericay.branch@wea.ac.uk

We ask for donations please to cover the session, room hire and refreshments.

London’s docks: their rise and fall.

Guest speaker Tony Tuckwell, Chair of Essex Branch of the Historical Association

From the crowded pool of London with its old Elizabethan Legal Quays and a City monopoly of the control of exports and imports to the development of ship technology which required ever bigger wooden ships and high-walled docks to contain them and protect their cargoes. Then came iron ships which pushed the docks even further out to the deeper water of the Isle of Dogs, emaciating the Thames ship-building and naval industries, driving them to the North-East, Ulster and Scotland.  And then the death-knell of traditional restricted practices in the face of competition from deep-water ports for mega cargo ships with containerised cargos with which a silting river could not compete, save for Tilbury which fitted the bill perfectly.

This is a branch Learning Circle: to register interest contact Branch Secretary Rhiannedd Pratley

Text 07876 717292   or email rhiannedd.pratley@wea.ac.uk  

Pay £7 contribution to Learning Circle costs in class

Queen Marie of Romania

with Margaret Mills

     An intersting history

At The Reading Rooms, Billericay High Street, CM12 9AS

This is a branch Learning Circle: if you would like to join us please contact Billericay.branch@wea.ac.uk

We ask for donations please to cover the session, room hire and refreshments.

Where there’s muck there’s money: the Importance of Public Health in the History of Medicine

Guest Speaker Richard Till

Richard Till, an old friend of Danbury and Little Baddow branch, will spend 3 sessions with us looking at the development of public health over the past 2000 years with emphasis on the growth of towns and cities – the great creators of wealth but also hotbeds of disease as, sadly, their sanitary needs were not always met. Money had to be found on the grand scale and that meant taxes. A willingness to pay was crucial, but what tipped the balance for or against?

This is a branch Learning Circle: to register interest contact Branch Secretary Rhiannedd Pratley

Text 07876 717292 or email rhiannedd.pratley@wea.ac.uk  

Pay £21 contribution to Learning Circle costs in class

Annual Friendship Tea with Essex Wildlife Trust Speaker

speaker Bill Godsafe

A chance to remember old friends and celebrate new ones

Bill tells us about his work as a ranger with Essex Wildlife Trust

 If you would like to join us please contact Billericay.branch@wea.ac.uk

We ask for donations please to cover the session, room hire and refreshments.