Firstly to wish all our members, both far and wide, a belated Happy and Prosperous New Year and to hope that you all had a Happy Christmas.

MKHA. We now receive a newsletter from the MKHA, Stacey Bushes Museum. This gives us advance notification of their future events. One thing of note on their latest newsletter is that Group Visits can be arranged. Would this be a good idea for our society to try to arrange a visit ? I haven't one for this year yet.

Celebration. The First Annual Dinner at the Swan is now a past event. Thank you Kay for arranging this really successful evening. Kay you did that well, (a permanent post). I feel that everyone who attended will wish to join me in saying it was a most enjoyable, informal and convivial feast. It was good to see Gillian our not so frequent member from Yeilden. Thank you to Philip for his few words at the conclusion in praise of the Society as a whole and as a successful organisation. Lastly our thanks to Bryn and Angie for a very well cooked meal and to our two extremely efficient waitresses.

2004 Programme. Your committee will meet on Wed.. Jan 28^th. to attempt to arrange your 2004 calendar of events, amongst other matters. If there is anything you would like to see included please contact one of your committee, (Norman, Sheila Q, Mark or Pearl) and we will see if we can do it. Both Peter Gardner and Philip Smith have agreed to do a Bygones and Film Show this year. While on this subject Ollie has very successfully transferred a couple of Peter's films onto CD, now starts the long arduous process of transferring the rest of the films. Thanks again Ollie.

Web-site.Mark now receives a monthly E-mail regarding the number of 'Hits' we receive on our 'Website' and it still remains one of the most popular in this the Milton Keynes area.

Raffle Tickets. We sold 244 tickets for the Community Foundation raffle. Thank you again to all members who sold tickets and to the three persons who stood valiantly for four hours in CMK to sell 108 tickets to the reluctant public. Sheila, Norman and Kay. It was a very good result. While we do not necessarily need the money it does make life more comfortable and secure for the SHS and what is more important it does help other charities survive. Eg.Scan etc.

Hub-MK. Meeting, Re-CMK Heritage Centre, held on Saturday January 17^th. Norman, Mark and Sheila attended a meeting held at Stacey Bushes, this was very well supported by representatives of the mainly volunteer groups. At this time the project is called HUB-MK. Well over 30 people attended. The meeting was chaired by Bill Griffiths of MK Museum and addressed by Cheryl Montgomery of the CMK team responsible for liasing between CMK management and the organisations interested in the project and CMK planning.. The project is to organise a Heritage Centre somewhere in CMK. Possibly on the end of a multi-storey car park at the John Lewis car park, possibly in the MK Library when it moves to its new site over by The Point, possibly in the Theatre area possibly by the church or the station or possibly somewhere else. This is a long term project with the plans not getting into gear for at least five years. It is an ambitious project a feasibility study will take place to find out if it can be viable and will need lots of corporate sponsorship as well as lottery funding. It will also house a conference centre. It is hoped that the Heritage Centre will enable visitors and residents of MK to find out more about the history of MK as well as the surrounding areas. It would house artefacts as well as being used for society displays. Most people at the meeting were in agreement that CMK was the area to have the Heritage Centre, but it was felt that the building should be more than just a glass box. The meeting felt that the HC should be somewhere adjacent to the Civic Offices and Library and Local Studies centre. Some of the groups represented did have artefacts that could be displayed and while SHS did not fall into this category, your representatives were in favour of the project as a whole and it could only be beneficial to MK. There will be a further meeting held on the 31^st January 2004 at Bradwell Abbey starting at 9-30am. I feel that this is one of the most important steps that MK is taking, until now the heritage that Mk has, has been largely the butt of jokes, concrete cows etc. But this project if it comes to fruition will put MK on a par with all the big towns and will probably lead on to greater things, maybe most of us will not see the end of it, but at least we are here on the ground floor at the beginning.

Our next meeting will be general meeting on Tuesday Feb. 10^th 2004 at Sherington Village Hall. 8pm.

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