The Forum

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Come and join us.

Enjoy interesting talks and lunches with a convivial group.

Valley Gardens

About Us

We meet each Thursday morning during the winter months from October to the end of April.

You can see more details about St. Paul’s Church Hall and nearby parking areas on the “Where We Meet” page.

Our members start to gather from about 9.30am when coffee or tea and biscuits are served until 10.00am. The meeting starts at 10.15am. After a short introduction by our Chairman and any business matters, a wide range of speakers present talks on a variety of topics. You can see the list of talks for the 2025/26 season on the “Programme” page. Meetings close at 11.30am.

Our current annual subscription is £10.00 for the full season, £5.00 for the part-season (January-April). In addition, we pay £4.00 for each attended meeting which helps to offset the cost of speakers, refreshments and room hire.

We also enjoy a New Year Buffet Lunch which is very popular with our members and their guests.

We have a long list of distinguished past Presidents and our current President is John Hewson.

The Chairman is elected annually and this season our Chairman is Sue Smith.

Talks are booked by our Speaker Secretary, Barry Moakes. He can be contacted at: 07912 548418 or on email at:

barryFmoakes@outlook.com

You can also contact our Secretary, Gillian Oldfield or our Registrar, Roger Oldfield (both) on 01423 507083 or roggilold@gmail.com

The Forum was founded in 1951 as Harrogate Men’s Forum when ten gentlemen met in a Harrogate cafe and proposed that a group should be formed to encourage retired and semi-retired gentlemen to meet for friendship and learning. Little did they know that 75 years later the group would continue to flourish and that, using the Forum as a model, similar groups would be established in other parts of Harrogate and in Ripon and Knaresborough. In 1970 when the number of members outgrew our original venue, we moved to St. Paul’s Church Hall which is on Belford Road (opposite the main library) and is where we still meet.
The affairs of the Forum are managed by a small committee consisting of the President, the current Chairman, the Forum Officers and three co-opted members.
We enjoy a good reputation for the quality of our talks and we welcome new members.
In October of 2019, following a comprehensive survey of our members, we decided that men-only groups are not in keeping with modern day thinking. Accordingly, after amending our Constitution, we changed our name to The Harrogate Forum and we are now inviting ladies to come and join us. Currently almost 45% of our members are ladies and that includes our current Chairman and our Secretary.
If you would like to come to any one of our meetings as our guest (free of charge), we will welcome you.

Later in the year we will be celebrating our 75th Anniversary.
Please see Social Events page for more details.