Heritage
Geoffrey Bond has been a very visible and active member of a number of heritage organisations and initiatives in his native East Midlands, in Oxfordshire, and in the City of London. In Nottingham, Bond was a Founder Trustee of the city’s world-renowned Galleries of Justice – now the National Justice Museum – and he is a former chairman of the Papplewick Pumping Station Trust, amongst many other regional involvements.
The National Justice Museum, Nottingham
Located in Nottingham’s Grade II listed Shire Hall and former County Gaol on High Pavement in Nottingham, the National Justice Museum – formerly the Galleries of Justice – is a multi-award winning museum telling the story of justice through time and offering extensive education programmes for young people.
In 1993 the Shire Hall was under threat of demolition and in urgent need of help. Local businessman, Mich Stevenson OBE, set up a campaign to save it and chaired a Trust with Geoffrey Bond as the Deputy Chair which raised over £2 million in the first 18 months. This secured a future for this important historic building and it became the first dedicated law museum in the country with a strong educational purpose to teach young people about Criminal law.
The National Justice Museum offers educational programmes in its own historic courtrooms in Nottingham and in the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
As a result of his many years of work with the National Justice Museum, Bond created the Rolls Building Art & Education Trust in 2010 to teach young people about Civil law. The educational programmes at RBAET are delivered by the London staff of the National Justice Museum.
The National Justice Museum is now the largest of its kind in the country and it is a major tourist attraction.
Southwell Music Festival, Nottinghamshire
Online video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMG5PJra1fw
Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire
Geoffrey Bond was a member of the Kelmscott Campaign Group which successfully raised funds to save this famous William Morris house and garden from dilapidation. Together with a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, funds were used to improve interpretation and access, and a new Learning Centre, visitor facilities, and a busy programme for schools and community groups, have enhanced visitors’ understanding of the house and garden. The learning and outreach programmes to schools help disadvantaged young people and a Maker in Residence programme runs at Kelmscott Manor through a partnership with Heritage Crafts and the Society of Antiquaries of London.
William Morris believed that art, like education, should be for everyone and described Kelmscott Manor as his ‘heaven on earth’.
Online video: https://youtu.be/jj3vN7LBx6k
The Rolls Building Art & Education Trust
This Trust was created by Geoffrey Bond in 2010 in anticipation of the opening of the new Rolls Building in London in December 2011 by HM The Queen. The idea of the Trust is based on Geoffrey’s many years of work as a Founder Trustee of what were the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham – now the National Justice Museum – and the educational programmes that it runs in Nottingham, London and Manchester.
The RBAET has a dual mission: to develop educational programmes for young people who may never have considered that a career in law was open to them and to bring art works to the public spaces of the Rolls Building.
Bond was formerly the Chairman of RBAET and is now Chairman Emeritus.
Online video: https://youtu.be/MoAM3PJfn84
Lord Mayor of the City of London’s Cultural Scholarship Scheme
(Since 2019 The Arts Scholars Cultural Scholarship Scheme)
As a former Sheriff of the City of London (2003-04), Geoffrey Bond established The Arts Scholars Cultural Scholarship Scheme in 2010. This Scholarship Scheme aims to raise awareness of careers in the heritage world and to encourage students from under-represented backgrounds to gain experience of heritage and cultural organisations.
Each summer this scheme places young people from Inner London schools with heritage institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, Buckingham Palace, the Victorian and Albert Museum, the Royal Opera House, the Guildhall Art Gallery, Keats House, West Dean, and The Geffrye Museum, giving students an opportunity to see heritage at work and helping to promote the City of London and its cultural economy.
Online video: https://youtu.be/m0q7I-6Ea8o
The Papplewick Pumping Station Trust
Geoffrey Bond was a Founder Trustee, with Sir Michael Nall, of the Papplewick Pumping Station Trust in 1974 and a former chairman. The Pumping Station, near Ravenshead in Nottinghamshire, is one of Europe’s great industrial monuments. Built in 1884, it is the finest surviving fresh water Victorian Pumping Station in the world still able to use its original Lancashire boilers to drive the engines. It is a veritable cathedral to water with its wonderful stained glass windows of water lilies and fishes of the local rivers and housing two magnificent beam engines built by James Watt & Co of the Soho Works, Birmingham. The building is also a Scheduled Property and volunteers steam and run the engines on eight occasions during the year.
The Trust, which was formed to save the unique Boulton & Watt beam engines, is not only a tourist attraction but a source of education about water in the environment. Bond created WET (The Water Education Trust) to inform young people in particular about the importance of water in the environment. After over 40 years’ service, Bond has retired as a Trustee and is now Honorary President of the Trust.
The Midlands Agricultural Engineering Traineeship & Apprenticeship Scheme
In his capacity as the then President of the Newark & Nottinghamshire Agricultural Society County Show in 2016, Geoffrey Bond established this apprentice scheme to promote agricultural engineering as a career for young people.
Bond has worked with NUAST (Nottingham University Academy of Science & Technology) and agricultural machinery manufacturers and suppliers to offer summer placements for students aged 14-17 years which enable them to gain valuable industry experience and the prospect of developing a fulfilling and rewarding career in agricultural engineering.
At a more formal level, apprenticeships are being created for older students (aged 17-25) who are already with agricultural engineering companies and who are attending day release at academic institutions. These students now have the possibility of receiving a bursary to assist them financially in their careers.
This initiative has received enthusiastic support from stakeholders such as Riseholme College in Lincoln, Brooksby Melton College in Leicestershire, the Institution of Agricultural Engineers, Agrimachinery News, and the Midlands Machinery Show. All of these organisations confirm the increasingly technical nature of the farming industry and that more young people need to know that it offers great career opportunities.
This Scheme continues to be administered by the Newark & Nottinghamshire Agricultural Society.
Online video: https://youtu.be/eOnPTifNJCk
The City of London Bridge Ward Club –Norwegian Business Scholars Trust
With his strong connections with Norway, Geoffrey Bond was the Honorary Consul for Norway for the whole of the Midlands for over 30 years. In October 2002 he created The City of London Bridge Ward Club Norwegian Business Scholars Trust which offers an annual scholarship to an outstanding Norwegian scholar at BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo and Bergen, and gives the successful scholar a six week placement in three different types of financial institutions in the City of London before the Scholar then goes on to study at Bayes Business School (City and St George’s, University of London).
Bond was formerly the Chairman but is now the Honorary Chairman of this Trust.
https://bridgewardclub.org.uk/norwegian-business-scholars-trust/
Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker
Geoffrey Bond curated Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker – the biggest exhibition of its kind since the Second World War – showing 850 years of some of the magnificent treasures of the Livery Companies of the City of London.
The exhibition, which took two and a half years to curate, had 164 items on display in the Guildhall Art Gallery owned by the City of London Corporation. The exhibition ran from June to September 2012 and was visited by HRH The Princess Royal. It attracted visitors from all over the world as well as many young people, particularly from schools in the London area. The exhibition helped to explain the great work done by City Livery Companies in promoting education in general and apprenticeships in their trades in particular.
The cartoon image on the front of the exhibition brochure depicts an Alderman of the City of London holding a traditional Loving Cup, still used on many occasions at City Livery Company banquets.
The Charles Norman Collection of 18th Century Derby Porcelain
Geoffrey Bond is the Curator of the Charles Norman Collection of 18th century Derby porcelain believed to be the finest of its kind in the world and on permanent loan at the Usher Gallery, Museum of Lincoln. The first catalogue was published in 1996 and the second edition in 2012 which gives very full descriptions and colour photographs of each object in the collection. Letitia Roberts, a New York based porcelain scholar, said of the collection: ‘No serious collector in any field ever loses sight of rarity, quality and condition, all of which qualities the collection meets.’
The Collection is well used by schools to tell young people about the decorative arts in general and English porcelain in particular, how it is made and its decoration.
Memories of a House at War
In 2016 Geoffrey Bond mounted a two day commemorative exhibition at Burgage Manor (where he lives) to show how it was used during the First World War from 1915-19 as a VAD hospital. The Voluntary Aid Detachment Hospital provided a vital nursing facility for wounded soldiers, utilising the help of local men and women who volunteered as VAD nurses and orderlies. The event attracted people from all around the UK.
Stained Glass Catalogues
Geoffrey Bond has had a lifelong interest in stained glass and is a Past Master of the Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass London. In 1998 he sponsored a catalogue raisonné of the Charles Eamer Kempe windows in Hucknall parish church in Nottinghamshire, one of the most comprehensive sets of Kempe windows. The catalogue was written by Adrian Barlow of Oxford, Honorary Secretary of the Kempe Society.
In 2012 Bond sponsored a catalogue raisonné of the windows of St Lawrence Jewry in the City of London – the first catalogue to be published of this important set of post-war windows which were created when the church was rebuilt after being destroyed on 29th December 1940. The craftsmen involved were Christopher Webb and Lawrence Lee. The introduction to the catalogue was written by Canon David Parrott, Guild Vicar of St Lawrence Jewry.
