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SHS Newsletter 20

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Dear Members,

My apologies for being so late with this copy of the newsletter.

Our last meeting was the return visit of Alan Richardson, talking to us about The Victorian Camera, or how the Victorians flocked to the magic lantern shows that were given in their village halls by itinerant travelling showmen.. Not a lot has changed, except Alan only travelled from Olney to entertain us. He really is a store of knowledge about this area and such a good speaker. Thanks go to Alan for going to the trouble of bringing to show us the examples of Magic Lanterns that he has in his extensive collection, the largest as big as a small car (this he didn't bring) he keeps it in his garage. The average sized ones he brought to our hall. Explaining the various methods of lighting these great appliances gas, carbide, oil, electricity, lime all of them extremely dangerous and were responsible for various fires and explosions. With the underlying theme THE DEMON DRINK.

Several of our members and a few more villagers joined people from MK Village and Broughton Village, members of the Two Archives Trust, on one of Philip Smith rambles round Sherington. It was just as enjoyable a second time around. The members of the T A T certainly did enjoy this and the weather was kind to us.

There are 50 calendars produced by SHS now on sale in the village shop, Alan or Pam will be pleased to take £3-00 from you for these, also they are on sale direct from us ask Norman or Sheila, we have 20 or so for sale. I hope that you like them and that they all do get sold.

The date that we will be selling tickets for the community car raffle has not been finalised as yet, it hopefully will be on a Tuesday some time in November in CMK, we could do with some more volunteers. But failing that please help by selling raffle tickets to your friends, the car will be a VW Beetle Cabriolet this year a superb model. But I don't know what colour.

The Cine to DVD project is not progressing very speedily. We have several estimates £800 to £1,400, but we are not sure about this yet. We are exploring several possibilities, Anglia TV, the Living Archive at Wolverton as well as several commercial companies. We need to spend your money with the best possible return that we can find. So the project will need a lot of groundwork done. We would welcome any input that anyone can give us. We are also exploring possible grants for this sort of project.

I regret to advise you all of another piece of Milton Keynes vandalism. No. 47 High Street. The cottage that the late Elsie Hill lived in and who had preserved the home as it had been all through her parents occupation of the same cottage. MK planning have allowed an extension to be built at the rear of the property, totally out of keeping with the rest of the stone built cottages, not even following the building line. The old outbuildings have been demolished and removed uncovering the end wall which was of a much earlier timber framed dwelling probably from the 18th century, this now has been hacked into to join on the new hideous yellow brick extension, which will be twice the size of the original building and this old timber framed wall will be covered and lost. Part of the footings of the earlier building are hidden round the back of the new extension but are visible at the moment. Photos have been taken but the work was well under way by this time. Another part of Sherington's heritage has now been lost forever. I understand that the planning officer and the ancient monuments officer have inspected the site and are satisfied all is well.

August 25th, the combined New Thursday Group charity day and SHS open day is close by and I hope to see you all there. At this moment I have only one volunteer to help out on the day, guess who ? Please come along if you can spare some time, during the day.

Mark has given me some details of our finances, we made a staggering £35, on the evening of Alan Richardson talk, but out of that we need to take the cost of raffle prizes, speakers expenses, and hire of the hall, so just a little profit.

From the fete. We sold 110 tickets netting us £55-00 and our share of the proceeds from the overall profit was £215-00. This was an unexpected bonus and truly welcome. It was calculated on the fact that we were a medium need society and we put in medium effort. I thought we put in maximum effort and made a brilliant contribution. But that’s only my opinion.

Also some information from the Heritage Association about our web-site, for this year.

The number of 'Hits' is recorded and noted down and is as follows,

January No of hits 1,927 and places us 9th

February " 1,682 " 9th

March " 2,284 " 8th

April " 2,819 " 8th

May " 4,565 " 4th

June " 3,643 " 5th

Hits equals the number of times people have visited and looked at our website, all thanks due to the valiant efforts of Mark in manufacturing the website.

Date of the next meeting is Tuesday 9th September, and after that the talk by Dianne Sutton on Tuesday 14th October.

NA.

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Latest Revision: 6 January 2007