We commenced the year with the return of a local historian Graham Jarvis who looked at theatres in Newport. Previously he had given us a look at the cinemas that used to populate our town at that time but as he pointed out this evening we were also very well served within the town by theatres and it was great looking at some of the theatres that used to adorn our streets along with various programmes actually from some of the shows performed there. I wonder what his next talk will be based around?

On the second Wednesday of February we had our Chairman give us an introduction to the hobby of family history. It was pleasing on this evening to have over twenty people there and more importantly some new faces. Hopefully John’s talk will have enthused those to continue attending and also bringing in others.

At the end of February Alan Smith pictured gave us his second talk to the branch which was given as ‘Newport Past’ but it did not turn out to be exactly that. We had a lovely look at some of the history of Flat Holm and Steep Holm firstly followed by a look at the various hospital ships from both wars particularly those relating to this area. He ended up with a few slides of old Newport so a good and varied talk on this evening.