Past Society Events in 2026

 

Click here for information about future events planned for the rest of this year and beyond.

 

Click here to see a timeline of the major Society events since our foundation in 1973!

 

Summer Outing

Saturday 25th July 2026

A Hastings walk, led by Antony Clayton

 

Fifteen members and guests enjoyed a day out in Hastings, the East Sussex town which has past connections to many people with Gothic genre connections.

On a day of perfect weather, we braved the steep hill climbs with Antony, and the people and subjects mentioned included George MacDonald, Gwen Watford, Jon Finch, and Edgar Allan Poe, with a film version of The Fall of the House of Usher shot in Hastings. Also mentioned were the occultists Aleister Crowley and Rollo Ahmed, and more, including of course, Ingrid Pitt!

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Outside the former home of poet and writer George MacDonald

 

Summer Meeting

Saturday 20th June 2026

Cloaking the Count

 

A talk by Graham Rowe on the history of the now iconic image of Count Dracula wearing a red-lined cloak. This is very different from the description given by Bram Stoker in Dracula, of "a tall old man, clean-shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot...without a single speck of colour about him anywhere".

Using stills from films and images of later merchandise, we could see how the image first appeared to come about in 1966 in the second Christopher Lee Hammer film, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, which is where we first saw the red-lined cloak. Lee's cloak in the first Hammer Dracula film in 1958 was completely black. This became the standard image as time went on, but what colour were the cloaks worn by the 'black and white' Draculas, such as Bela Lugosi? Evidence from the cloaks from that period which still exist seem to indicate that many of them were not, in fact, completely black. The rather strange colours chosen for some of the linings (none are vividly red) was probably only down to what looked best on black and white film.

 

A special guest star at this talk was our Society cloak, donated to us by Hammer Films in 1975!

 

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Graham Rowe with our Society Hammer cloak!

 

Gothic Northumberland Trip

Monday 1st - Friday 5th June 2026

 

Twenty members and guests enjoyed four nights staying in the historic town of Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland, in the very north-eastern corner of England.

 

Despite a poor weather outlook, we managed to dodge most of the downpours and enjoyed visits to no less that six castles, three abbeys, a church and a priory!

 

This included a visit to Holy Island, Lindisfarne, only accessible by road at low tide across a causeway, where we visited the ruins of the priory, and the small, but more intact, castle.

 

Spring Meeting and AGM

Saturday 25th April 2026

AGM and Grand Auction

 

After our usual AGM business, where the accounts and membership reports were delivered, we held a Gothic auction.

While we have held auctions in recent years at major Society events like conventions, this was the first one held at a normal meeting for many years.

A large number or genre-related artefacts changed hands and went to good homes!

March Literary Meeting

Saturday 7th March 2026

Lucy's Story: a Re-imagining of Bram Stoker's Dracula

 

An illustrated talk by Rosie Fiore, the author of The Death and Life of Lucy Westenra

 

When teacher Kate Balcombe sets about renovating her flat in the attic of Hillingham House, once the home of the Westenra family, she finds an unsent letter, written 130 years before by Lucy, the daughter of the house. As Kate begins to investigate Lucy’s story, she meets James Harker, Mina’s great-great grandson, and together they uncover a hidden story of deception and murder.

 

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Rosie Fiore is an accomplished author and editor, having worked in theatre, television and journalism, with eight published novels so far. Her love of Bram Stoker’s Dracula led her to adapt it for the stage in 2019, and now to retell the story from an entirely different perspective.

Her talk gave us the background to her novel, with particular insight into the position of women in Victorian society.

 

New Year Meeting

Saturday 17th January 2026

Film Evening

 

For our usual New Year film screening, this year we chose the Hammer Films classic, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, which

was to mark 60 years since its release in 1966.

Unlike Brides of Dracula in 1960, this was a proper direct sequel to Hammer's first production of Dracula in 1958. Christopher Lee has a non-speaking role this time, but his screen presence is such that he really doesn't need to say a word!

Peter Cushing's Van Helsing role is admirably substituted for by Andrew Kier, as Father Sandor.

 

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Although there was hardly anyone at the screening who had not watched this film many times before, it's such a favourite that everyone agreed that there's no such thing as too many viewings in this particular case!

 

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