Tea and Talk

Tea and Talk is back at Temple Newsam House on Wednesday 21 October, the next session in a drop-in club run by Leeds Museums and Galleries. It's a free hour of talk and tea, with a different expert taking the floor each month. The sessions run from 11:00 to 12:00 on the last Wednesday of the month, except December, so if you can't make this one, there's another on Wednesday 25 November and a final one on Wednesday 16 December.

The talks draw on the museum's collections and local history, and the speakers change every time. You'll hear from local historians and curators, but also community volunteers and project officers, so the perspective shifts from session to session. It's a drop-in, which means you can just turn up without booking and stay for as much or as little as you like.

The venue itself is worth a look if you haven't been in a while. Temple Newsam House is a Tudor-Jacobean mansion built by Thomas Lord Darcy, once the largest house in Yorkshire. Henry VIII seized it in 1537, and Elizabeth I later took it too. It's a 42-room house that holds some of the finest Tudor, Jacobean and Victorian interiors in the country, with spectacular wallpapers, a collection of Chippendale furniture and fine silver. Outside, it sits in 1,500 acres of Capability Brown landscaped grounds, with a rhododendron walk, walled gardens, formal gardens and ponds. There's also a tearoom that uses produce from the estate's own vegetable gardens and farm.

The whole series is part of Leeds400, the celebrations marking 400 years since the city's first Royal Charter. The next session is Wednesday 21 October, 11:00 to 12:00 at Temple Newsam House, and it's free.