The Atherstone Cup

Woking History Society aims to make an annual award, the Atherstone Cup, for a piece of original research on an historic aspect of the Woking area. This is for an essay of no more than 5,000 words. It should be referenced, and any illustrations must have correct copyright. It should not have been published previously and it will be published in the Society's Newsletter.

It must be submitted electronically to the Society by October 31st and the award will be presented at the AGM in December.

Judging is dome by an independent adjudicator.

In the absence of any entries, the committee might ask an adjudicator to select the best article appearing in the Newsletter during the previous year. The author of that article will receive the award.


Previous entries
Previous entrants have taken an aspect of local history in which they are interested and the cup competition has given them the encouragement to do a little research to expand on their subject.  Researching these days does not have to be onerous or time consuming as we are lucky to have the Surrey History Centre in our Borough and there is always the internet.

Over the years, entries have covered a wide variety of subjects such as

The Bisley tramway
The residents of Sutton and where they lived in 1851
Timber trade in Woking
Martinsyde Ltd
Early history of Brookwood Cemetery
Sir Samuel Morton Peto
Birch Farm, Horsell
Wheatsheaf Close, Horsell
Development of East Horsell
Reliance: the working life of a Wey Navigation barge
The Darwin/Wedgwood Woking connection
A small plot of land in Horsell. The History of Horsell Wharf.
Old Woking - a History through Documents
Puerperal Insanity in Brookwood Asylum 1867-1900
The Horsell War Memorial
Raynham the Unlucky

The origins of the award
The Cup was first awarded in 1989 when George Atherstone, our then Treasurer, presented it in memory of his wife, Irene, who had been one of the founder committee members of the Society.  George and Irene came to Mayford about 1962 and as soon as the Society was founded she took an enthusiastic part in excavations, running the Society’s library, measuring buildings for the Society and the Domestic Buildings Research Group.  Her recording of Birch Cottage, Horsell, appeared in our newsletter in the month after her death in Jan 1988.  She was also an enthusiastic member of Surrey Archaeological Society from 1972, being finds supervisor for the nine years of the training excavation at Sutton Park and distributing that society’s newsletter.

George arrived in Southampton from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, on 3 Dec 1939 as a young man keen to help the war effort and became a pilot in the RAF, being awarded an MBE for bringing home a crippled Wellington bomber on one engine.  He continued flying after the war as a pilot with British Airways and some time before 1950, when he arrived in Southampton again from South Africa he had married Irene.   The Mayford History Society has often been a family affair, and by 1976 George had become Hon Treasurer, serving in that role until 1990, even though he and Irene had moved to Abinger in 1984.  After being widowed he moved first to Holmbury St Mary, and for the last ten years of his life to Cornwall, where he enjoyed sailing until his last years, before his death in Feb 2003.

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