Christmas 2014
Christmas
greetings from Bagshot.
Considering that the last newsletter was only four months ago there has been a surprising number of additions to the website since then. Which is one way of saying that I've found myself rather loaded so let me apologise now if you have sent me a contribution that I have not yet used.
Our village Christmas tree is now up in The Square, surrounded by hundreds of Christmas Wishes written by the village's children. The tree may look an unusual shape - this is because it was not grown for the Christmas Tree market but is an unwanted self-seeded specimen from one of the local heaths cut down as part of a conservation project.Chopping
trees down in the name of conservation may sound bizarre, but the
heaths are not the native landscape, but the consequence of grazing and
working the poor soil. Now a rare habitat of international
significance, in the absence of grazing they are slowly being taken
over by invading quick-growing trees. Hence occasional work
parties are held to clear the invaders. And what better time
to
do this than just before Christmas and re-purpose the trees.
Not only do we have the tree in The Square, but there are about
a hundred small trees decorating the buildings in the High Street -
illuminated at night.
Village Events
Bagshot had an Owl Hunt over Halloween. 48 naughty owls had escaped and were hiding in windows throughout the village. But the RSPCA need not get in a fluster for the owls were toys, each with a name. By now you will have guessed that this was a family competition to see how many could be found. The profit made from the nominal entry fee was donated to local charity Harper Asprey Wildlife Rescue.
A year ago, after being under threat of closure for very many years, our village library became a volunteer-run Community Partnered Library. The year has passed very quickly and the library proved to be a sufficient success that it will now be opening on 6 days a week.Comment and pictures from Remembrance Sunday are below.
There
are numerous carol singing events being held, not just in the
churches but also in the Three Mariners pub.
St Anne's Carols
by Candlelight service held on the 21st saw a packed church with
additional chairs needing to be brought in.
Among
the additions to the website are:
Groggy has added to his recollections of Chobham Common in the 1960's.
Liz Schultz (nee Berry) remembers the Papworth family.
We have some updates about the Papworth family.
Kirko tells of finding Shepherds Crowns in the 1960's. Ray found some information from the Natural History Museum, and I came across one among fossils being displayed by a metal detectorist! So we now have a photo to see.
There have been a lot of contributions about Mala Brand, who seems to have been a very colourful local character.
John Coombs remembers the "7th sound" band also memories of paper deliveries.
What was once known as Humfrey's Farm has been identified by its present owner as part of Astage Farm.
Shirley Benham recalls RAOS pupils attending the local grammar school, and Christmas parties at the school.Rob Winter adds to the information about the boxing club.
Sarah has noted that the Chobham Common site referred to here as a PoW camp from WW2 is not listed by English Heritage. This is the site on the left if you travel along Chertsey Road from Windlesham to the roundabout at its junction with Windsor Road. Were you a local young teenager during the war years and have first-hand memories?
Don Bradbury remembers tramp Archie.
Chris has identified the location of Connaught Villas
Maureen's mother remembers the doodlebug.
Roy Draper confirms the location of the Brompton Sanitorium from personal knowledge.
Julie had asked for help identifying her g g grandmother's maiden name. She has now written to say that she has broken through this barrier. Her enquiry has been removed.
New requests for information include
Jayne Gibb is interested in finding out more about the cottages opposite the chemist, and about Manor House Farm
Loraine would like to know about the history of Providence Cottages on Guildford Road.
Kirko asks about Joe Rockall.
Maureen's g g grandfather resided in 1871 at the Bell & Crown Inn (though he is listed in the census as a carriage maker rather than publican). But Maureen has been unable to find out anything more about the Inn.
Reg Ward wonders what can have been the purpose of a hatch is the wall in School Lane.
Lionel Parr
Regular readers will no doubt recall the many contributions to this website made by Lionel Parr, son of a former head gardener at Bagshot Park. I have now learned from his son that Lionel passed away in November. I am sure that all our thoughts are with his family at this sad time.
Remembrance Sunday
With the 100th anniversary of the start of WW1 (the war that was supposed to have ended all wars), the 70th anniversary of D-day, and the current conflicts becoming ever more atrocious, 2014 has seen people being far more conscious of war than has been the case for several decades. It was then perhaps no surprise that Remembrance Sunday saw our church packed.
The village war memorial is in the church grounds, moved there from its original location on London Road many years ago to facilitate a road widening scheme. Just before 11am the congregation move out of the church building to assemble round the memorial for the Last Post, 2 minutes silence, and the reading of the names of the fallen. Always a very moving occasion, it took on a greater significance this year.
The 1st Bagshot Scouts have a report and a video on their website.
Change to the website style
When I started this website (longer ago than I care to remember) web authoring was delightfully simple, the HTML language in which pages are written was simple, screens were about a page-width in size, and you could just write, knowing that the reader's Internet browser would make an entirely adequate job of displaying your content. But with time the language has had more and more "features" added to it, many authors seemed to be more interested in jazzy images and gee-wizz features than providing content. Personally I have stuck to the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid). Computer screens have got bigger, both physically and with the number of 'pixels' on them. Now my 'just type it in' pages yield far too many words across a modern wide-screen display. The solution to this problem that has been adopted by very many authors is to constrain the presentation to be a fixed width - and not caring if the width they chose is too wide for small screens or printers. The solution that I am aiming to offer is to constrain the text width on a wide screen, but to have the width dynamically adapt to a small screen, including if you rotate a tablet or smart phone. I only have a limited number of devices on which to check out the results. I would be interested to hear what you think and whether you think I have made an improvement that is worth the effort.
In my experiments I found that many mobile devices (tablets & smart phones) did not respond to the facility that I offered on many pages to vary the text size, so I anticipate dropping it. I do not know whether the feature was used, so I would also like to hear from you if you think that this would be a retrograde step.
The narrow format has been applied to these pages as well as this newsletter:
With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to you and
those you hold dear.
Neil
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