Dear Members,
Again not a lot to say this month. The quantity of data that arrived on my doorstep was down on average.
But to offset that we had the best turnout for a general meeting since October 2002 and we had Caroline Leslie as a guest so we surpassed that total of October. Caroline has expressed a desire to draw in her inimitable way, some of Sherington's characters. Hopefully we have been able to provide her with some material from our photo albums.
We have now received the excellent copies of the aerial photos from Aerofilms Ltd. These are dated from 1963 to 1965. These are really first class and although quite expensive worth every penny of the £235 they cost. They do show how the village has grown and changed in 40 years. Copies of these photos will be laminated and be available for your examination, and of course taken to our shows. The originals will be safely kept in their own album. But will always be available for examination. We also have a superb photo of the iron bridge in Newport Pagnell, taken we guess in the early 1900s, judging by the dress of the people on the bridge. This is not strictly a piece of Sherington memorabilia, but close enough. This was passed to us by the courtesy of Gail our newest member. Who incidentally is to help me out after the AGM with some "speechifying" about family history.
We have had several e-mails over the past month from various old Sheringtonians, namely Andrew Yates whose family were associated with Gowles farm and Sowmans the Olney Ironmongers and Agricultural engineers. (You will still find some drain and manhole covers by this company, in Sherington. Brian Watson with an enquiry about the Stone Asylum, near Aylesbury, ( Crumps last home) and Fiona Price with an enquiry about the Sherington coat of arms.
Philip reminded us that it is 70 years since the symbolic hatchet was buried by Oxford and Cambridge on our knoll.. he has also undertaken to contact the local presses with this information. I expect Edward Ellis who was one of the dignitaries at our re-enactment in 1995 will take note of this anniversary.
We have the promise of the loan of several Crump pictures that we should be able to scan and save onto CDs , this will substantially expand our file on this Sherington eccentric artist, this hopefully will be done over the coming months. Also a promise of some Ivester Lloyd sketches that will add to our file on both Jack and Tom of that family. Our guest at our last meeting, namely Caroline Leslie, looking for photos Sherington characters, has also promised to supply us with copies of some of her sketches and paintings so that we can immortalise her in our archives, so far we have nothing of her work and she is one of our excellent child/children character artists. Hopefully Caroline will be selling her pictures at the Fete.
Ian Collinge our web-master was also at our February meeting, and has given us a long list of deficiencies in our web-site. These are in the process of being rectified, but this is to be a long job, so keep watching the site and noting the gradual updating and improvements to the content. And do please let us know if you feel more could be done, and what way it could be accomplished.
Some future pictures and possible subjects for our monthly articles in Scan were circulated at the meeting and several were accepted as suitable material, with some character sketches. But to maintain the readers interests it would be nice if some of the members could suggest the subjects that they would like included in these articles. We would do our best to research these and present the article. A photo postcard of the Oakley Hunt outside of the Crown and Castle. This was sent to a Miss Molly Gardner it cost ½ penny (old money) in 1908 and its greeting read "All's well". Probably arrived 1st post the next day after posting as well.
There was also the story of the last dancing bear to be seen in Sherington, but we are not too sure whether that was before "Old Markham" had been into the Crown & Castle or afterwards. That we will never know. Also another tale by the same author of the size 15 brassiere, this old Markham seems to be at the centre of a lot of these tales, maybe someone should delve a little further into his background.
The next meeting will be our AGM on the 8th of March at 8pm. It will not take long and there will be an introduction into family history to encourage you to start yours now, don't put it off or you will miss some golden opportunities that are around now.
N.A. & K.T.
Stop Press:- Our web-site has placed us third in the league in January with 11,851 hits.