Meetings / Events

Meetings are held at Fort Nelson on the fourth Wednesday of every month, excluding August and December, often with speakers on military subjects that may range from Victorian guns to local history to World War One and Two.

The meetings are held at Fort Nelson from 19.30 to 21.00 hours, and are both informative and social occasions. One meeting each year is normally a visit to a local fort or gun battery not generally available to the public.

Forthcoming Events

The PFS Annual Outing this year will be on the 14th September to the SS Great Britain at Bristol. As with previous years the outing will begin and end at Fort Nelson, departing 0800 sharp.....
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PFS members are invited to share their fortification photographs with those at the meeting.

The PFS 2019 Annual General Meeting will be held on the 12th October 2019 at Fort Nelson, commencing at 1400hrs. All PFS members are welcome to attend.

Another fascinating talk from local historian Andrew Negus, this time on the history of Winchester.
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A talk by PFS member Lewis Sharp of his 2018 tour of 19th Century Russian and Prussian Fortifications in Poland.

2020 marks the centenary of the deployment of the para-military police force - the Black and Tans - in Ireland. Their indiscriminate and heavy-handed methods succeeded in dragging the IRA to the negotiating table but alienated the majority of the law-abiding Irish population. The talk on this fascinating and generally forgotten subject will be given by PFS member Richard Willcocks

PFS member Nick Tudgey tells the tragic story of Franklin's lost expedition, a British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. The two ships became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in the Canadian Arctic. The entire expedition, comprising 129 men, including Franklin, was lost.