February 2003
We are pleased to welcome Arthur Hirst as our new Village Warden. Arthur was appointed following the resignation of Michael Home to take up full-time employment and started work on January 6th. He has lived in the village nearly 4 years, having done comparable work in the South Midlands. We. wish him well in taking on this important role in helping to care for the village.
David Nobbs
A NEW BABY
Alan and Moreen Wheeler would like to proudly announce the birth of their granddaughter, Hannah Leah, born on 21 December 2002 weighing 81b 6oz. Both baby and mother are well. Hannah's mother, Amanda, is well known to a lot of people in the village as she has worked at the Garden Scene for seven years and hopes to return in the spring.
WANTED - YOUR OLD CHRISTMAS CARDS
Rather than waste those lovely Christmas cards, please choose the nicest and bring them to the collecting box in the narthex at St Paul's Church. They will be re-mounted and sold later in the year. All proceeds will be donated to St Paul's Church, primarily for the Organ Fund. Volunteers are needed to join an experimental team who can cut and paste in the Upper Parish Room on either of the following dates: Monday 3 February l0am-12 noon; or Tuesday 11 February 7.30-9.30pm. Materials will be provided. Please ring Mary Stirling on 01923 262397 if you would like to help and, if so, when.
POPPY APPEAL
My wistful report in the November issue about falling below our past record produced no less than £45 (plus Gift Aid certificates) from people who had missed this year's collections and were apparently concerned about my reputation. Many thanks indeed! We are now well ahead and hope to remain so!
I was delighted to learn that the Chipperfield Branch of the Royal British Legion has been awarded the Blackley Poppy Cup for the previous year. The Cup is given annually to whichever small branch in Hertfordshire has increased its usual contribution to the Appeal by the greatest amount. In our case this was the extra £1200 we raised through our War and Peace evening on 11 November 2001. I am to receive the Award at the County AGM on 19 January and shall do so on behalf of the many people who helped us to plan and execute that event. A very special thanks to you all!
Anne Wyburd Honorary Appeal Organiser
TEAM WORK
In the autumn last year Terry Timberlake suggested that residents could help remove litter from footpaths in the village.
Eight people volunteered to help him and thanks to their efforts over the last three months quantities of cans, plastic bottles, sweet wrappers and other rubbish have been removed from the car parks, pavements, footpaths and hedgerows in the village. What a difference! Many thanks to them all.
If only we could stop passing motorists throwing litter from their cars there wouldn't be quite so much to pick up.... Liz Holliday
LEST WE FORGET
On Armistice Sunday 2002 most cars were brought to a halt, some with their engines still running, for the two minute silence which was observed by the annual gathering at our War Memorial. Above the poppies and the names of the Chipperfield dead in both World Wards it was sad to see the column still topped by a broken shaft.
The surrounding cross has been missing now for over two years and many of us at the outdoor service had forgotten which of the two most recent forces of destruction, vandalism or gales, had caused the damage which has not yet been repaired. Perhaps a future issue of Chipper
field News could contain an update on the efforts that are being made to unravel the red tape that impedes progress. The postponed target for completion must surely now be achieved before 11 November 2003, in order to ensure that another Remembrance Sunday does not go by with our own War Memorial looking less well preserved than those in foreign fields and in distant lands.
A broken pillar is the ancient Christian symbol of death and mortality, but the surmounting cross, when replaced, will once more reinforce the image of salvation through sacrifice.
Mary Stirling
A reply from Liz Holliday on behalf of the Parish Council: THE WAR MEMORIAL:
A TALE OF PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCE
In April 2002 I undertook, on behalf of the Parish Council, to arrange for the cross on the top the village war memorial to be replaced in time for the Remembrance Day service in November 2002. Seven months would surely be enough time to get it sorted out ...
Firstly the owners of the war memorial had to be identified. Following an extensive search through the archives no `owner' could be traced and in May the Parish Council decided to assume responsibility on behalf of the Parish. The memorial is a listed `building' and therefore subject to conditions laid down by English Heritage. There followed endless telephone calls and correspondence with English Heritage, The Friends of War Memorials and Dacorum Borough Council, all of whom were most helpful, in an attempt to discover if the memorial was eligible for a grant towards the cost of repairs. Grant application forms arrived and, together with a host of other information, all required three written estimates for the necessary repairs.
The first estimate arrived in May - only two more required. That's when the patience and persistence came in. Over the next few weeks I phoned and wrote to nine other monumental masons all over the south of England. Estimates were promised but I received only one (from a firm in Kent).The deadline for grant applications had come and gone and retrospective applications are not allowed.
At this point the Parish Council decided that in order to get the work done in time, they would meet the cost of the repairs without a grant. The order for the work was placed in June and a deposit paid in July to allow the stone to be ordered from the quarry and the restoration to be completed by the end of October. August and September passed. More phone calls. Problem - the quarry could not provide the stone for some reason (not specified). October: The stone was coming "soon" and the November deadline should be met.
Well, the stone did arrive - eventually - but too late for the work to be completed in time. Since then, it has been so wet that it has been impossible to undertake any work on the memorial. As soon as the weather improves we should see the memorial covered in scaffolding and the replacement cross put in place. I live in hope ...
Cllr. Liz Holliday
JOHN JONES (1924-2002)
John was born in Chipperfield, the fifth of six children in 1924 and lived most of his life in this area. As a boy he attended Chipperfield School and was a choirboy at the Parish Church. In 1942 he joined the Navy, serving on MTB's (Motor Torpedo Boats) in the English Channel and then in the Adriatic. He was later based in Malta as Coxswain of the Base and then was involved at the end of the war with selling off the MTB's.
When he returned home he joined a government training course and became a carpenter. He loved wood and worked with it throughout his life becoming highly skilled in its use and, eventually, because he was a perfectionist, working as a model and pattern maker for DeHavilland and Rolls Royce, where he was required to produce life-sized models in wood of highly technical pieces of equipment.
During his time in the services John trained as a Physical Training Instructor and was persuaded by the then vicar to take on the Chipperfield Boys Club, which he then ran (with help from his brother, Robert) for about 20 years. John specialised in club swinging and that became an important part of the ethos of the club, particularly the annual display including human pyramids and all the boys swinging their fluorescent clubs in the dark while the UV lamps shone.
When he retired, he became what he described as a "domestic engineer", running the home and garden whilst Sheila worked. He had always loved the world about him and was incredibly knowledgeable about trees, birds, wild flowers and different sorts of grasses. Retirement gave him more time for his garden and he always kept a well-stocked vegetable patch.
He has been described as a reserved and modest person with a dry sense of humour. A compassionate and caring man who was always there for people in his own unassuming way, and totally devoted to his family. Many people had cause to hold him in the highest regard.
EDITH MIDGLEY (1922-2002)
Edith Midgley, who died on 16 November last year, lived all her life in Chipperfield. Many people will have recollections of their own association with Edith, but as a tribute to her, I have brought together some of her own memories which she recorded in 1998 for the `Chipperfield Within Living Memory' project.
Edith, an only child, was born at 5, Dunny Lane. Her parents, James and Ethel Birch, were the first people to move into the new council houses there in 1922. Edith had a very happy childhood and spent hours playing on the Common or in the fields opposite their house. There were always lots of other children to play with. Sundays were always special. Sunday best clothes were worn and that included hats. Edith attended Sunday School, which was run by Kitty Bunyan in the village school in the afternoon with a monthly morning service in the Church. Regular attenders received books as prizes. Mothers and children went on an annual church outing to somewhere like Southend. Kitty Bunyan also ran the Candidates' Club, which was an evening club for girls of school age and over. The group met in the Village Institute, but in good weather they went to Waterhouse's Meadow (now Kings Close) to play cricket and rounders and Edith really enjoyed this. She attended the Brownies and the Guides meetings in the Village Institute and annual Guide camps at Church Lane, Sarratt. Schooldays were spent at the village school, where there were four classes. Mr Bidnell, the Headmaster, taught the top class and played the fiddle for country dancing. Friday afternoons were best, because the pupils played netball in the playground. If it were wet, they had a serial story. `Sir Lancelot' was Edith's favourite.
On leaving school at 14, Edith went to Pitman's College in Watford for two years to learn shorthand/typing. In 1938, she went to work in the office at Simmonds' Nursery. When the war started in 1939, she worked in Hemel Hempstead and then at Dickinson's Offices at Apsley. Much to her employers' annoyance, she volunteered for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, where she remained until 1945. She had met her future husband, Jack, at a dance in the Village Institute in about 1940. He had been stationed at Chipperfield Lodge on Whippendell Hill with part of the 21st Tank Brigade until the time of Dunkirk. Sadly Jack was later taken prisoner of war. They met up again after the war and were married in St Paul's Church by Canon Jeffries at the end of 1945,
Jack worked as a driver for Simmonds' Nurseries and Waterhouse's and Edith worked in the office at Waterhouse's. They decided that they would build their own home and bought the plot on the corner of Alexandra Road and Langley Road, where three old cottages had been demolished. They had difficulties in obtaining a building licence and building materials were in short supply after the war, but by 1949 their house `Bradfield' was completed and Jack set up in business as the village barber. He had done his apprenticeship in Bradford after leaving school (I imagine the name was a combination of Bradford and Chipperfield).
Edith, retired in 1982 and Jack closed down his business a little later, but they continued to live in the village in their retirement. Jack died in 1994 and now that Edith has gone, another chapter in village history has come to an end.
Mary Nobbs
BETTY LEATHAM (1923 -2002)
Betty Leatham (Bubbles) was born in Queen Street, Chipperfield, on 1 June 1923. She died in Melbourne, Australia, on 7 December 2002. Bubbles had lived in Australia with her daughter, Celia, for the last 23 years of her life. Her ashes were interred in Chipperfield churchyard after a short service taken by the Reverend Peter Hart on 6 January 2003. Reunited with her husband Joe.
WINTER'S GRIP
As I write these notes (Jan. 8) we are in the middle of a cold snap. The coldest for a couple of years I think, as I have had to carry buckets of water to the chickens down at the farm, as the main supply to the hen house is frozen solid.
I love the crisp days of winter and always look forward to snow, but just at the moment I haven't got time for the 900 yard dash, carrying two pails of water, from the farmhouse to the hen house! When I was young it was always a challenge, almost a game, to get the hen house water main running but now I see why my dad hated it so!
I don't suppose the wild birds like it much either and they certainly have been pleased with all my offerings at the bird table. A band of a dozen or so long tailed tits have been regular visitors to the table in the last few days. It's a job to count them as they flit from the lilac tree to the table and back, but its nice to see so many and hopefully our offerings will keep them going as harsh weather can take its toll on such small birds. I have been putting some food out on the ground as well because some birds, like the dunnock and the wren only feed low down or on the ground.
Some girls get fancy underwear or French perfume for Christmas, but I got a cycle helmet and some paving stones! Much more useful! Now that our son has passed his driving test and I no longer have a passenger I am back on a bicycle again. One can see so much more at a slower pace and I try to stick to the quieter roads. As I have peddled along the lanes I have seen good-sized flocks of mixed thrushes: mostly red wings with Mistle thrushes and Fieldfares, flying from the holly trees. They seem to systematically strip the trees one by one, hardly leaving a single berry on each tree. There was a good crop of holly berries this year, but I don't go along with the saying that it means a cold winter. I think it means we didn't have a sharp late frost last spring when the holly flowers were setting.
The paving stones are going down near the new wildlife pond where we are having a "log cabin" built. We are going to put our camping gaz stove in it for afternoon tea and morning coffee. "Ooh" said the cabin sales lady " just like a Wendy house"!
Wendy Bathurst
SUPPORT THE HORNETS!
Watford Football Club has provided Chipperfield News readers with the opportunity of a unique match day experience for the match v. Stoke City on Saturday 22nd March. A special price of £45 (normally £55) will entitle you to an escorted Stadium tour before enjoying a three course carvery meal in the Hornets Nest Restaurant.
A reserved seat in the Rous Stand enables you to enjoy pre-match entertainment followed by the game itself. At half-time coffee or tea is offered.
Tickets are limited so book yours now by sending a cheque (this will not be cashed before 17th March) made payable to Watford F.C. for £45 per person, together with your name and address to: John Dickinson, Copthall Cottage, Kings Lane, Chipperfield WD4 9EN. Tel: 01923 262777