90 members and several more guests attended this special event. Thomas Brassey, born and brought up just outside Chester, deserves to be as well known as many of his Victorian contemporaries. By the time of his death in 1870 he had constructed one third of the railways in this country and 1 in 20 miles of the railway network throughout the world. Brassey was, at the same time, constructing major municipal works, including water supply and sewer systems, such as Bazelgette’s London foul drainage, to the laying of the first Transatlantic cable.