The Chairman, David Walters, gave the following report at the Society's Annual General Meeting in September 2010 :-

Another year gone, it seems difficult to believe that the Society in its present form was founded only 6 years ago to build on existing work and make our local history available and interesting to as wide a section of the community as possible. 2009/10 has been a successful year consolidating progress made in the two previous years when we had Heritage Lottery Funding and preparing for future research which we expect to be able to fund ourselves.

Our membership has remained at about 150 and our monthly meetings have been well attended, sometimes with near capacity audiences. Highlights of the winter season were perhaps the Christmas Social at the Millstone when Sue Allen, an actress, gave a scintillating (some would say titillating!) performance as Lady Mary Rose and our Archive Evening in March which proved so successful that we plan to repeat it next February with a wider selection of material on view.

Against this it is disappointing to record that our Summer Evening Visits were not well supported with one being cancelled completely. Over the past few years support for these visits has fluctuated but they have never been as popular as our winter evening meetings. Perhaps there is too much competition from other activities, holidays, gardening, etc or perhaps other factors such as the visits themselves, their timing or their cost play a part. Your committee would welcome your views on this.

We have continued to work in the community giving talks to other organisations and exhibiting at the Doncaster Local History Fair and at the Tickhill Gala. We have also completed and distributed to the schools in Tickhill a booklet entitled "Treasures of Tickhill" which is an abbreviated pictorial history of some key features of Tickhill. St Mary's School are using this in a modified form as a learning resource for their Key Stage 2 pupils. From this month the booklet will be on sale at Society meetings and at KSM in Castlegate price £3.99.

Under the guidance of our Publications editor, Hazel Moffat, we have produced two more Occasional Papers during the year and earlier this summer we passed the important milestone of one thousand copies of papers sold since the first one was published over four years ago. We are very grateful to Hazel for her hard work and to Linda Mayes at KSM who so willingly continues to sell the papers for us.

We are now planning an ambitious project to produce in hardback form a new illustrated history of Tickhill designed to be of interest to many in the local population. Carol Hill, the well known local historian, will be the author but we need help from Society members to carry out specific pieces of research.

Our website continues to receive up to one thousand hits per month and has been the means whereby people living many thousands of miles away but with an interest in Tickhill have been able to contact us. The website is regularly updated and fresh material is added. In many ways this website has become Tickhill's window on the world.

None of these activities would have been possible without a lot of work by a dedicated team of people. I would particularly like to thank the Officers and Committee for all their hard work; hopefully 2010/11 will be another successful year.

Below is the report for the previous year's activities:-

The Chairman, Steve Payne, gave the following report in the Society's Newsletter for the year 2008 -2009

I am delighted to record another very successful year for the Society with strong membership and sound finances.  

We had a series of very informative and entertaining speakers with large and enthusiastic attendances at meetings. (It is good to know that speakers are delighted to come to Tickhill because of our very positive reputation.) 

We have been very active in the community giving talks to local groups and organisations and have just started a regular exhibition of our growing collection of photographs in the Library.  

Research activities have continued to be very active with the production of Occasional Papers   (762 copies sold up to the end of August) as well as the snippets in the Newsletters, and for the first time we have run a workshop to develop skills in researching local history.  

We are delighted that as a result of our high profile in Tickhill there is a flow of new materials into our archives as people lend us photos and documents. Our new scanning sessions in the Library (1^st Friday of each month) are adding to this. We have continued to add to our collection of Living Memories interviews. 

The website grows in popularity with 130,000 viewings of our photo gallery since we launched it and regular down-loadings of our articles (over 400 per month). We have added interesting details to complement our photo collection with the help of Carol Hill and “reminiscence sessions” with local Tickhillians. 

Although the Heritage Lottery Fund support finishes in September, it has enabled us to buy good kit and do many things we would not have been able to do without their financial help – all of which will continue and develop.  

On the social side, it is a pleasure to experience the buzz of our Thursday meetings and we also had a memorable Christmas get-together plus two very successful summer visits. 

In summary, the Society can be proud of its achievements both the established activities and the way in which we are moving forward and developing. 

I thank all those who have contributed to this success and wish the Society continued success in 2009/2010 under David’s chairmanship.