Bruce Hewitson, vice chairman, welcomed everyone to the first Probus meeting of 2016 and wished everyone a Happy New Year
This is a special year for Probus here in Westbury because later this year we will be celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Probus establishing itself in Westbury.
Probus, for those 40 years, has provided a great talking shop for retired and semi retired professional and business people in the town and surrounding area. In addition, superb talks from experts on a whole host of different subjects have been given regularly at our meetings.
Outside visits to places of interest and regular quarterly luncheons are further features that have been undertaken over the 40 years and continue to be key features of our meetings.
Bruce Hewitson also mentioned the recent Christmas luncheon, held at Warminster Conservative Club. 40 members and their partners attended and had a lovely meal. The luncheon over, we held our Christmas raffle and raised £128.00 for charity.
The main part of the meeting was a talk by archaeologist John Smith on Westbury in Roman Times. John brought a lot of examples of day to day items that would have been used or worn by the towns folk of Westbury from AD47 onwards throughout the Roman occupation of Britain.
John explained and showed the coinage that we would have used. Examples of the rudimentary clothing for both men and women and the basic pottery items, plates and cups that were very common in Roman times were handed around to our members.
John explained much of the Roman philosophy behind their very successful occupation of our shores and why we seemingly returned to a basic type of living after the Roman departure.
The vice chairman, Bruce Hewitson, thanked John for an excellent talk and everyone showed their appreciation.
The next meeting will be on Tuesday 19th January at the hall behind the URC church at 10.00am. Speaker to be announced.
