September 1997
As a result of the three beautiful gardens opened for the Red Cross on Sunday, July 20, £4,290.65 was raised.
This wonderful total was the result of gorgeous weather, hard work by many and tremendous generosity from over 1,300 visitors.
Apologies to residents for the traffic jam but Chipperfield on a lovely summer Sunday has many attractions, so we were not entirely to blame!
Over six years Chipperfield gardens have raised over £15,500 for the Red Cross - a magnificent achievement.
Thank you all very much. Bill Fenning
Rebecca Mitchell
It is with much sadness that we record the passing of our dear friend and colleague Rebecca Mitchell. Rebecca died peacefully on the morning of July 22.
Rebecca became Membership Secretary of the Society soon after joining the committee at the end of 1988. In this role and in her unfailing support at our flower shows, as well as her regular contributions to Chipperfield News through this column, she brought a characteristic energy, enthusiasm and generosity for which the Society will always be grateful. Rebecca will be greatly and sadly missed by us all. Autumn Flower Show
The Autumn Show is on1y days away but there is still plenty of time to sort out some exhibits and get your entry forms in. There is something for everyone in the schedule:
flowers, vegetables, floral art, cooking, handicraft and junior classes, so no excuses about the weather.
Your committee, who put in time and not a little hard work to present these shows, are looking for your active support at this our last show of the year, hopefully to make up for the very poor turnout at the Summer Show. So come on, don’t be shy or leave it to somebody else, help put on a good show and keep the society alive. If you have not exhibited before, need any help or information, let me or any committee member know.
John Foulgham
Resettlement of Offenders welcomes you all to Holywell Lodge, 41 Holywell Hill, St Albans (Diocesan House) on Monday, September 22, to hear Geoff speak at 7pm, with coffee from 6.3Opm (and to our AGM at 6pm, if you would like to know more about our doings, both at The Mount and elsewhere). We need to know about numbers, so please ring Anne Wyburd on 01923 267515 if you would like to come.
NEW FACES AT THE BROWNIES
1st Chipperfield Brownies resume on Tuesday, September 9 at the Baptist Church Hall. We currently have a full pack with a waiting list. However, if you wish to put your daughter’s name on our list (it is never too early!) please telephone me on 01923 268852.
Although this is my first appointment as Brown Owl I have had eight years’ experience as a Young Leader and Tawny Owl running Kings Langley and Abbots Langley Brownies. I have been helping Heather and Gail at Chipperfield for the past six months and would like to thank them both for their hard work over the past four years. Both myself and Shelley are looking forward to what we hope will be a long association with a superb group of girls. Being involved with running either Rainbows, Brownies or Guides is an extremely rewarding experience. Should you wish to join guiding in Kings Langley District please contact Phyllis Ratcliffe (District Commissioner) on 01923 671005.
Sian Hopkins Brown Owl
RSPCA APPEAL West Herts Branch
Thank you to all of you who contributed to the house-to-house collection at the beginning of July and to the Flag Day in Kings Langley. We raised £661.75 all together, which was an even better result than last year.
Especial thanks to the collectors who so willingly give up their time to help this good cause.
Lucy Williams
Chipperfield achieved a good result in our return to the Best Kept Village Competition after a number of years’ absence. At the meeting of the Hertfordshire Conservation Society at County Hall on July 10, it was gratifying to find that we had been placed third in our category in the West Central area of the county. What is more, because of the high standard we achieved as a new entrant, we were awarded one of three Certificates of Merit in the county and a cheque for £50. The certificate will be displayed in the Village Hall and the money will be devoted to an environmental project.
The scores we achieved were as follows:
1. Trees, hedges, walls, fences, banks, verges, residential properties, roads, gardens and outbuildings: 18 out of 20
2. Open spaces such as allotments, ponds and streams, footpaths and rights of way,
BUNGALOW TO LET IN S.W. FRANCE
Languedoc area in small village between Beziers and Pezenas, 20km from
Mediterranean beaches. Three bedrooms, kitchen, lounge/dining room, garden. Shops in village and in Pezenas (6km).
All enquiries to 01442 833985 (evenings and weekends).
DACORUM HERITAGE TRUST
The Dacorum Heritage Trust Ltd (DHT) is a registered charity, limited by guarantee. It is an ‘umbrella organisation’ comprising representatives from almost all the history and museum and archaeological societies that are established in the Dacorum area. Its headquarters is an old fire-station in Berkhamsted, converted at some expense by the Borough into a museum store. Although it has no museum premises as such, housing permanent displays and with full public access, the Museums and Galleries Commission has just agreed to its registration as a museum.
Registration is a benchmark of excellence indicating to fund holders and other museums that fully approved standards are employed and maintained.
The Museum Store has received a great number of artifacts, large and small, of local interest - either on loan or donated. Dacorum Borough Council is the main fund provider and gives DHT further support from its Heritage Service.
With registration, DHT will now be able to seek out the surplus material relevant to Dacorum that is held by other museums, thereby reversing the ‘heritage drain’. This has been one of DHT’s long-term
objectives.
The Trust has a full-time curator, eight directors (all part-time) and a host of volunteers, from local societies working half a day per week and from the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies working on a fortnightly basis. The Trust also organises small exhibitions, which tour the libraries, and one major exhibition each year. There is always a need for stewards and ‘shifters’.
A quarterly newsletter is also published. Anyone who is interested in further aspects of the Trust is invited to contact the Curator, Mr Matt Wheeler, at The Museum Store, Clarence Road, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire HP4 3YL, telephone 01442 879525, or John Nichols on 01923 264208.
DATES FOR MOBILE COUNCIL CASH OFFICE
Council Tax and rent can be paid at Dacorum Borough Council’s travelling cash office which visits Chipperfield once a month. It will be parked by the Village Hall from 1 .30-3.3Opm on a Friday afternoon.
The dates for the next six months are:
October 3, October 31, November 28, January 2, January 30 and February 27. The service will also be available on one Saturday each month at Hemel Hempstead and Berkhamstead town centres.
Payment can be made by cash or cheque and books will be stamped as proof that the council has received the money.
Chipperfield Theatre Group will be taking a trip back into the last century for their next production - The Matchgirls.
This lively musical is set in Bryant & May’s factory in London’s East End in the 1880’s. It is the true story of Kate and her mates - the Cockney Girls and their fight against the appalling working conditions they suffer in a match factory.
They are helped by Annie Besant, a well-to-do lady of some influence, and writer of articles for the local paper ‘The Link’. After discovering their plight, she sets about organising the first ever industrial action by female workers, in order to improve their lot. They strive to take on their employers with action that eventually made industrial history in London.
Despite their hardships, or maybe because of them, they live life to the full and will use any excuse for a good old knees up! Described as a cross between Oliver! and Half a Sixpence, The Matchgirls takes us out of the Victorian slums into a fun-filled lively musical with many toe-tapping and easy listening songs. Matchgirls and dockers tell their story, with some very hummable songs and wonderful chorus numbers. Rehearsals are in full swing and even on script-only rehearsals, (with no musical accompaniment), the cast insist on singing through the songs as they love them so much.
The musical play, which was written by Bill Owen, with music by Tony Russell, opened in Leatherhead in 1965 to a standing ovation.
HOUSING SCHEME WINS SUPPORT
Detailed proposals for a development of new dwellings available for rent exclusively for people in housing need with a proven local connection were unveiled at a public meeting convened by the Parish Council in the Village Hall on July 9.
Speakers included Assistant Director of Housing at Dacorum Borough Council, Cohn Farrar, Development Manager for Hightown Praetorian Housing Association, Simon Mitchell and the Rural Housing Adviser to the Community Development Agency for Hertfordshire, Robert Hill. Two alternative schemes at a small site at the east end of Croft Meadow were presented - one for six houses and one for eight houses - and a strong measure of support was given to the eight-house scheme as a reflection of the high level of need and projected demand for the accommodation. This would provide two 1-bedroom, four 2-bedroom and two 3-bedroom houses.
COUNCIL TAX EXEMPTION FOR GRANNY FLATS
Relatives who are over 65 or disabled and who live in an annexe to the main family home could be paying council tax unnecessarily.
Changes to the law governing exemption from the tax were announced earlier this year and affect granny flats that are banded separately from the main family home. Many people are unaware that they could qualify.
“If an overpayment has been made for the council tax year 1997/8 we will refund it,” said Councillor Paul Hinson, of Dacorum Borough Council’s Budget & Assets Committee.
For more details call 01442 228905.
FOLLOWING THE PATH GOD HAS LAID FOR ME
Continued from Page 7
sub-committees and have also become involved in children’s and youth work, helping to run the daily Holiday Club for over 80 children at the beginning of the summer holidays and assisting with weekend and half-term ventures for members of the Church youth groups, who are aged between 10 and 18.
I have attended Christian exhibitions and evangelism seminars and really become enthusiastically involved in the many activities of a Church with a living faith. As a Christian I have become a prison visitor and a member of the chaplaincy Bible study and prayer group at the Mount Prison in Bovingdon.
Initially I was assigned to two prisoners but over the six-month period have been requested to take on two additional
members. One of the men, a Muslim, has been converted to Christianity through attending the prayer meetings and, despite the language difficulty, is determined that he will encourage his wife and children to share the peace and strength he has himself found. I met the other young man through the Monday evening Bible study group. He
is the chapel orderly and is looking to the possibility of eventually being ordained. I recently attended a very inspiring service at the beautiful prison Chapel of Christ the Carpenter where two of the previously mentioned prisoners were baptised. In November last year, feeling that God was leading me to even more involvement, I attended an interview with the Church Mission Society in the hope that I could do some work for them overseas. I did not seem to fit in with what they were looking for. They were very surprised that none of my voluntary work was done locally and also at my long journeys to Chipperfield (which by now had developed into most weekday meetings as well as Sunday services) and asked why I did not work with a Camberley church. After speaking with Angela, we agreed that there was no reason why I could not, and with the help of a friend and neighbour, I was introduced to the vicar of another St Paul’s (this time at Camberley). We looked at the possibilities and I felt that I would like to work in an entirely different field and eventually agreed that I would come along to the weekly Thursday coffee mornings to meet and talk to the older ladies who attend and help with the clearing up afterwards. I now do this as often as possible, combining it with their monthly communion service.
When my husband, David, returned from his evening walk excitedly saying he had seen a family of bright yellow birds
with thin sharp beaks and long slender, dark legs and two white tail feathers we all rushed for the bird books.
To our amazement, the only bird that fitted the description was a yellow wagtail, an unusual shy bird of wet meadows and river sides, not wide open arable fields full of rape, where these had been.
I wished I had gone on the last dog walk of the day, too, as we felt they must be just passing through.
I was not going to miss out the next evening though - just in
case! Well these birds certainly had not read any books! They stayed for a t least four days
and each evening delighted us by perching no more than 15 feet away on the tops of the rape plants and making seeping noises to each other!
They are insect eaters and were so close that we could see them catching their food in their slender beaks. There seemed to be a plentiful supply, which kept them in the ‘wrong’ place for so long.
Things do not always go by the book, and our efforts to make a wildflower meadow where some old apple trees blew down has proved this once again.
I carefully planted good plants of cowslips and oxeye daisies in the very poor soil and have kept to the late haymaking and autumn grazing timetable, as the books say, but this year only three of over 30 plants reappeared and flowered. I think it must have got too dry last summer, but they still come up on
During this time I have also been thinking about, praying and exploring the possibility of joining a convent. I have spent several sessions in Derby at the Convent of the Holy Name. The Mission Sisters there serve God in a variety of ways, offering themselves to him and the outside community through several dimensions including prayer, prison visiting, schools, youth, pastoral care, hospital visiting, care of the disabled and needy people, spiritual guidance, preaching, and overseas work. Their day consists of worshipping God through the Daily Offices, commencing with the 7.45am service of Prime continuing with an 8am Eucharist, a 12 midday Office, 5pm Vespers, 9pm Silence
Dunstable Downs, so maybe they just do not like it here!
Another part of the goat run that we rotovated and re-seeded last year is completely the opposite. It looks a picture just now, full of the delicate white stars of lesser stitchwort, and a few oxeye daisies and yellow horseshoe vetches. All arrived of their own accord and are greatly pleasing the meadow- brown and ringlet butterflies, as well as me! The large patch of stinging nettles at the top of the run had been playing host to masses of small tortoiseshell caterpillars but these have now gone, into chrysalises I hope, to be replaced by swarms of the black spiny caterpillars of the peacock butterflies. Hopefully the commas will be next in line.
Wendy Bathurst
and ending at 9.l5pm with Compline. They invite not only guests of the Sisters, but anyone who seeks to follow the way of Jesus to share with them in their worship, and by offering a life of love and witness and welcoming membership to the Fellowship of the Holy Name.
I will be joining them on a six-month ‘testing of vocation’ in October as a Postulant before joining the Novitiate. I am told that initially two years is spent learning more about God through prayer, the Daily Office, the Holy Name Community itself and the outside community it serves.
Apart from the six-acre site in Derby, the Order has Houses in Keswick, Nottingham, Oakham, Lambeth and Chester as well as in Lesotho and Zululand.
I would very much welcome your prayers and support as I look to follow the path on which God is leading me.
Gill Phillips