Winstred Hundred Parish Council
Supporting the local community
Wigborough Traditional Meats’ latest ‘occasional’ newsletter has now been released and shares tales of frustration borne on the back of weather too damp to make sileage, let alone hay. While the grass grows it is under increasing threat from hungry geese and expanding rabbit populations. Meantime, as time moves on so do young helpers – some finishing at college and moving on, others joining as part of their own education.
To read all about this and more visit the Garr House Farm website.
At 7:30pm on 14th July the Friends of St mary’s, Peldon are holding a celebration of Bastille Day with Food, Drink, Songs and Poems with French and French-inspired music— featuring:
Admission at the door £10
Includes cheese and nibbles and a glass of French Wine
Among others these are some of the many topics covered in Wigborough Traditional Meats’ periodic newsletter. With the rainy start to spring the cattle made a late exit from their sheds putting a strain on silage supplies, there was a sad loss of a calf resulting in the exit of Bossy (the herds head cow), the colourful imagery of the “N.E. Essex Pigeon Squadron” potentially threatening crops if the growth regulators don’t get applied as well as the arrival of a new muckspreader! To read all about this and more visit the Garr House Farm website.
Peldon Jubilee Festival, 1st– 4th JuneIt is amazing to think that the Peldon May Festival – this year renamed to coincide with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations – is now in its seventh year. Initially staged to launch the Friends of St Mary’s, the festival has grown into an annual village event, centred around the church and village hall.
Last year, the May Festival raised over £2000, enabling the Friends to see the completion of essential electrical rewiring in the church, including enhanced lighting and heating. However, there are still many projects to carry out, particularly the need to install toilets and a wet area. With the aid of grants and a substantial programme of fundraising events throughout the year, the Friends are on the way to achieving this aim but there is still some long way to go, so we are hoping that the Peldon Jubilee Festival 2012 will raise even more than before.
The festivities begin on Friday evening, 1st June, with Festival Folk at The Plough, led by Keith Lovell. This proved very popular as an opening event last year, with the village community coming together to enjoy a relaxed evening of impromptu shanties and folk tunes, as well as some great food and beer. This is a free event starting at 7.30pm, but we may well shake a bucket or two and entice you to buy a ticket for the Festival Grand Draw (first prize £100 and many other fabulous prizes).
The Festival then really kicks off on Saturday at 11am with our traditional fair and family fun day in the grounds of the village hall, including craft, plant and cake stalls, demonstrations, Punch and Judy, bouncy castle, grand prize draw, tombola and a street organ complete with monkey. By popular demand, the Owl Man will be back with his amazing collection of owls and if you’d like to get close to some other fascinating creatures, Animal Experiences gives you the opportunity to handle snakes, millipedes, spiders and more! Refreshments, including a beer tent, will be available throughout the day, with Ploughman’s lunches served between 12 – 2pm, and Jubilee cream teas between 2.30 – 4pm.
As usual over the Festival weekend, St Mary’s Church will be open between 11am – 4pm on Saturday and Sunday for viewing the Flower Festival (a jubilee theme, I believe), Art and Photographic Exhibitions, and the Friends’ pictorial display of events and improvement projects. The church tower will also be open for spectacular views over to Mersea, Langenhoe and the developing Abberton Reservoir. As you make your way up or down, remember to admire the newly refurbished and reinstated Miles Gray Bell.
On Sunday 3rd June, following the Festival Thanksgiving Service at 9.30am to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, Peldon once again hosts its Open Gardens event (11am – 4pm). As you enjoy the gardens, a whole host of Scarecrows – royal or otherwise, will be competing for the Jubilee crown, so watch out for them in the village and cast your vote for the winner when you return to the village hall for lunch or a jubilee cream tea, where you may also be invited to hunt the garden gnomes!
Then, for what promises to be the highlight of our Jubilee Festival weekend: a Festival Folk Concert at 7.30pm in the church, featuring The Medlars, a Colchester-based three-piece band with very diverse roots, and No Stings Attached (Gwendal Moële and Catherine Legg), an Anglo-French a capella duo, singing traditional songs in English, French and Breton – ‘quite exquisite…with beautiful harmony’. Both The Medlars and No Strings Attached have been performing to high acclaim in pubs and clubs across Essex and Suffolk. Not to be missed! Tickets £10, including light refreshments, from Bill 01206 735770 or take your chances on the door.
And finally, Monday! To draw the Festival to a close, Peldon has joined forces with Great and Little Wigborough to host a Diamond Jubilee Street Party for the children of all three villages, to be staged at Peldon village hall at 3pm. For more details contact Mel: 01206 736118.
With so much on offer, this promises to be our best Peldon Festival yet. We do hope you can join us!
With a Jubilee slant this year’s Peldon Festival runs from 1st to 3rd June with a range of entertainments and activities for the whole family to enjoy. Starting Friday evening with The Shantymen from Mersea entertaining in the Peldon Plough the Festival moves on to a traditional Fayre on Saturday. The Fayre provides a range of fun activities as well as refreshments a beer tent and Jubilee cream teas. More Jubilee cream teas on the Sunday as Gardens are opened for viewing around the village with the festival rounding off Sunday evening with The Medlars and No Strings Attached performing in the Church.
With vocal support from members of Quire (The Colchester World Music Community Choir), Bill Tamblyn celebrates the work of local music historian, Chris Turner, revealing the wealth of music sung in West Galleries in our area from the 18th century onwards.
Come and join in a rumbustious song or two on Wednesday 16th May at 7:30pm in St Mary’s Church, Peldon! Tickets £8
This is NOT about Anglican choirs as we know them today. But interestingly enough, the story does reflect the antagonism between choir and clergy that goes way, way back into our folk history. Nothing new here!
Professor Bill Tamblyn begins with the mystery: What ever happened to the West Gallery at Peldon? All the evidence was cleared away when it was pulled down in the mid 19th century.. or was it?
Was there a West Gallery Quire of rustics who sang loudly from the gallery and ‘led’ the singing? If so, what did they sing? Can we sing it too?
Building on scraps of information from Peldon, and records from other parishes round the country, Bill creates a musical picture of a lively, rumbustious and irascible bunch who created a whole new form of music-making that was to liven up services and, as is still true to day in the North of England, liven up pub singing at Christmas.
Bill brings with him members of Quire – The Colchester World Music Community Choir to help us enter in to the spirit of the times. You will go out with a lively spring in your step and a song in your heart such that you will ask “why cant we sing like that in church these days?
Working under a Parish Council initative together with the manufacturer, Littlethorpe, who kindly provided the timber, and a grant for the labour from Essex County Council, our local handyman, Terry Simmons, was pleased to announce completion of the enhancements to the bus shelter at the Salcott crossroads.
The shelter is made from quality hardwood and since Littlethorpe bus shelters are expected to last for up to 50 years we hope it will be providing a pleasant, user-friendly and weatherproof facility for many years to come.
Cause for rejoicing! The Village Design Statement is complete and has been approved by Colchester Borough Council. You should expect your own copy to drop through your letterbox in a month or so.
It covers the villages of Peldon, The Wigboroughs, and Salcott cum Virley. Many of you contributed to it by completing a long and detailed questionnaire back in 2009 and a small group have been working on the results ever since.
A Village Design Statement is a statement of a village’s character and qualities. It documents what residents value about their area and what they consider are the important character and features which should be retained and preserved for current and future generations when new developments are considered. Once approved by the Borough Council the VDS must be taken account of when planning applications are assessed.
In giving unanimous approval to our VDS the Borough Council were most complimentary. Comments included “wonderful”, “fabulous”, “interesting and unique”, ”very useful to other groups”, “should be issued to Estate Agents to describe the parish to buyers”. A councillor representing one group who started their VDS before we did said they would be using ours as a model.
Unusually our VDS also includes a Parish Plan which highlights those issues the community would like the Parish Council and other authorities to address. Many suggestions were made during the lengthy process of producing the VDS and Parish Plan – not all of them correctly reported in the recent edition of the County Standard! The Parish Council will be formally considering the feasibility of implementing those suggestions which were supported by a majority of residents.
You can download the newsletter or visit their website at http://garrhousefarm.co.uk to find out more.
