April/May 2011
Alex Lewis 1989–2011
As many of you will know by now, our beloved son Alex died on 17 February, just over four years after being diagnosed with Osteosarcoma, a primary bone cancer that mostly affects teenagers and young people. He left us, peaceful and content, having married his beloved Ali just five days before, on what was a blissfully happy day for them and us all.
This wedding, arranged in ten days, would not have been possible without the incredible help, generosity and kindness of many friends in the village and friends of Emma and Martin’s in Wallingford and beyond, and for this we will be forever grateful.
Similarly the memorable Thanksgiving Service on 28 February was attended and supported by so many of you, and will be a great comfort to us all in the days to come. There, family and friends reflected on Alex’s short but much valued life; his courage and strength, his love and consideration for others, his energy, humour, sense of fun and positivity. We can not thank our family, friends and all who know us enough for their support, love and kindness, now and throughout Alex’s illness.
We now hope to put our energies into supporting the Bone Cancer Research Trust (http://www.bcrt.org.uk/ ), whose aim is to improve outcomes for people with primary bone cancer through research, awareness, information and support. To those of you who have already donated in Alex’s memory, thank you so much.
Sue Robson has kindly decided that the Trust will be the Brightfest charity this year, and Andy will be running a quiz at the Red Lion on 30 May. We are at present planning to utilise other family talents with an Art Exhibition and a Concert later this year. Alex had already been making plans for a sponsored cycle ride from Lewis in the Hebrides to Lewes in Sussex, an ambitious project that we hope will come to fruition this summer.
We would be very grateful for your continued support.
Angela and Andy Lewis
Letter and Update: Core Strategy 2011
Dear Editor
As a former villager now resident in Winterbrook I am saddened by the article in the recent Villager on the Core Strategy. I am opposed to the number of houses being suggested, 400 will be too many wherever they are placed. Wallingford is a small market town, large scale building on the outskirts, will not bring more trade into Wallingford. Both Wantage Road and Winterbrook/Reading Road are already very congested at busy times with kerbside parking on the narrow roads. Parking in Wallingford is in short supply especiallyon Fridays and Saturdays. The idea of cycle lanes and pedestrian paths along the road is not practicable because of the narrow road, hospital entrance and bus stops in the area either side of Bradford Brook. With regard to access - the entrance proposed at no 2 Winterbrook is very close to the entrance to the Medical Centre and WCH. The distances from the town centre to Winterbrook roundabout for the Berkley Homes site entrance is only a little less than the distance to theproposed entrance for site B. Site E is an attractive rural area with several old houses with large gardens and small fields and much wildlife.Those of us on the eastern side of Winterbrook are concerned about possible flooding if land the south of Bradford Brook is covered in concrete.
Core Strategy Update
Since 21 January, when the latest SODC consultation concluded, there seems to have been a calm in the Core Strategy. What a contrast to the hectic events leading up to that date: the packed meeting in the Village Hall on 8 January, the “Drop in” at the Red Lion on 17 January and then the scramble to complete Publication Stage Representation Forms to get as many as possible to the Council Offices before the deadline. Collating these representations has been underway in Crowmarsh, ready for their submission to the Secretary of State by mid March with the draft Strategy. Apparently SODC received more than 1700 individual representations, some 800 to 900 relating to policy on Wallingford. These responses can be viewed at the Council Offices, but there is a fee for obtaining copies. One break in the calm occurred on 1 February when about 50 Wallingfordians and Brightwellians gathered where the footpath behind the Wantage Road emerges on the corner of Fir Tree Avenue. They announced 37 reasons why the Core Strategy was unsound, drawing attention to the parlous state of the footpath; which is in multiple private ownership. This is one of the two pedestrian routes PRUPIM claims to offer a good connection for pedestrians and cyclists between Site B and Wallingford.
An appeal on the SODC decision against developing Site E has been lodged by Wates, but no date has been set for the hearing. PRUPIM are expected to submit their planning application for Site B soon and they may be putting on an exhibition of their plans. The elections on 5 May for District and Parish councillors may see changes in the composition of the District Council which could be significant.
Allsorts PreSchool
As I write this the first signs of spring are appearing: daffodils are poking their heads through the ground to join the snowdrops One of the things that epitomises spring is, of course, spring lambs and the children at Allsorts were lucky enough to have a close encounter with some recently. Thanks to Roly, the shepherd at Little Wittenham farm, the children were able to visit the farm and had a chance to feed a lamb with a bottle and to put out fresh bedding for them. A lovely time was had by all, including the parent helpers and staff.
In January Allsorts was very pleased to welcome Julie Carr as the new PreSchool Manager. Julie will no doubt be a familiar face to many in the village thanks to her involvement in lots of village and school events. Julie comes to the job with a huge amount of experience in the field of early years education and we are sure she will be a valuable asset to our pre-school.
During last term the children were introduced to phonics in preparation for their eventual move up to primary school. This has proved to be very successful, with many parents reporting that the children are repeating the letter sounds and accompanying actions at home. The staff have also been encouraging the children to come up with ideas for activities in the home corner. So far the transformations have included a hairdressers, a shop and an impromptu pirate ship!
The children recently had fun celebrating Chinese New Year. They tried fortune cookies, made a stir fry and jasmine tea and were each given a beautifully folded red envelope to place under their pillows to be magically filled with money (both edible and non-edible) before they awoke. Many thanks to Victoria Clyde-Matthews for spending hours in paper folding preparation. Thanks also to Victoria for stepping into the breach and becoming a temporary play assistant for a term whilst pre-school was short staffed. Her enthusiasm and creativity have been greatly appreciated, as have her cooking sessions with the children. The culinary masterpieces have included skinny fruit tarts and Numberjack biscuits as well as home made play dough which the children immediately had fun playing with.
W.I.: Green Shoots
We began the year with a flurry of successful activities to distract us from the dreary winter weather. Our Birthday party in January appeared doomed to failure, when our Malaysian cookery demonstrator failed to materialise. Having battled through traffic, she appeared an hour late, hot and flustered, but still managed to feed over 50 members magnificently. Mr. J D Rogers proved to be a very accomplished and knowledgeable speaker on his whistle-stop tour through the History of the Post Office. He very cleverly drew our attention to a number of unusual post-boxes in Oxfordshire. We look forward to a demonstration using spring flowers from a talented local florist, Keri Harvey and a topical talk about the ‘Greenhouse Effects’(see below).
Two very new groups have recently formed, proving that WI presence and influence in the village continues to expand. The knitting group led by Anne Brooker, but open to a wider group of villagers, has been a runaway success. The Memoir writing group, has also attracted good support.
Sue Collett
Parish Council
PCS Officers Sam Greenough and Nikki Lees were welcomed to the January meeting. Numerous complaints had been received by householders affected by the continuous parking of vehicles by people who did not live in the vicinity. Councillors discussed these concerns and concluded, in particular it was important to continue to report the matter to the Police on the special incident number- 0845 8 505 505. Details required are: Location, Registration Number, Owner if known, make, model, and colour of offending vehicle.
White Lines Village Hall
The working party had considered all the issues relating to the white lines, care had been taken to seek the views of the surrounding local residents. The working party recommended two proposals:
1. Two lines are kept one directly in front of the Village Hall extending as far as the stream to the east and to the entrance to Strangers Place on the west. On the opposite side the line would go from the gate way to Fairlight House increasing a further two metres to the east. All other lines and all the “keep clear” removed. 2. One line to be kept directly in front of the Village Hall extending as far as the stream to the east and to the entrance to Strangers Place on the west all other lines and all the “keep clear” removed. After some discussions a third proposal was put forward: To remove all lines and thus reinstate the original condition. A vote was taken to cover all three proposals. It was resolved to remove all lines and thus reinstate the original condition. Carried- 5 votes to 3.
John Sheard
Brightwell School
Spring is now well and truly with us and inspiring the learning here at school. We have begun the term with the whole school studying one picture that is currently displayed at the Ashmolean Museum. The older children have been over to see it and we have a print in school for us all to study. The picture “The Hunt in the Forest” by Paolo Uccello has inspired some wonderful art work, promoted debate and writing across the school. Later this term as KS1 disappear into “Imaginary Worlds”, our year 3 class will be “evacuated.” If anyone has any memories of WW2 and would be willing to come in and talk to the children please let us know. It would be wonderful to hear how Brightwell faired during that time.
Many of you may know that Mrs Stevens is retiring this Easter having been the School Secretary and Finance Officer since September 1990. I know so many of you have known Jan in her professional capacity and would like to wish her well. If you would like to pop in to school to sign a card or send your best wishes for her, you would be most welcome. Everyone here will miss her calm nature, lovely sense of humour and her business knowledge very much. Jan has been of great support to me personally in my first couple of years here for which I am most grateful. I will certainly miss her. We all wish her well for a long and happy retirement with her husband.
Environment Group: Wireless Electricity Monitor
You may have seen electricity monitors advertised and offering potential electricity savings of up to 20% on electricity bills. So what do they do and how do they work? Basically they provide a continuous reading of the electricity you are using, and from that you can see the impact of various electrical devices such as washing machines, electric kettles etc. The basic models simply plug into an electric socket, and can’t be used with wired-in devices such as electric cookers. Better models have a wireless meter so that you can view consumption from any where in the house. Also they may have the ability to download the information to a PC for analysis.
In the Brightwell Environment Group we decided to purchase one of these and see what they could do and also to loan it to villagers. The model we chose is an Owl Electricity Monitor+USB. This is a wireless model and can download data to a PC. It can output usage in kW, £ sterling, or CO2. For example you can show your children how much the Xbox is costing to run. Or you can compare whether it is more economical to cook dinner in a microwave or a conventional oven.
The installation Guide is well written and easy to follow. After putting in the batteries the first task was to synchronise the “Sender” and the “Monitor” to allow them to connect by wireless. The “Sender” transmits electricity usage to the “Monitor”, which may be up to 30 metres away. The next stage is programming the “Monitor”. Items such as date and time are obvious. The other important item was to set the tariff rates. Now go around the house and test your appliances to see how much power they consume. It hit me how much power the electrical kettle used. This rammed home the message that you shouldn’t overfill a kettle.
It is not essential to have a PC to benefit from this device, but downloading the data to a PC adds to the benefits of the device. The PC software produces graphs or bar charts of power consumption. These graphs show times of peak power consumption, which may enable you to identify savings that can be made.
If you would like to try our device please contact David Evans-Roberts telephone 836839, email devansroberts@gmail.com.
David Evans-Roberts
Brightwell Vineyard
Well it’s now over 20 years since Brightwell Vineyard was planted as one of the early experiments in reviving the English vine industry. That experiment has now grown into an annual production of 30,000 bottles, with demand exceeding supply. But still we get the question – can you ripen grapes in our temperate summers?
Yes, is the definite answer!
The right varieties of grape, grown on the right soils, and with the right knowledge of how to treat the vine along with expertise in winemaking has made English wine some of the best in the world. In a Sparkling wine tasting by Masters of Wine in February, 5 English Sparkling wines beat famous champagne (Moet et Chandon Brut Imperial) with an English blanc de blanc taking 1st place (There were no countries scoring in the top 30 other than Champagne and England (NZ Cloudy Bay Pelourus was 36th). This type of success is now repeated each year in competitions such as the Decanter World Wine Awards and the International Wine Challenge where English wines have won first place trophies. How do our cool climate wines beat Champagne in competition? Simple really – Champagne is also a cool climate in a cool part of France, and these cool climates give more delicate flavours than hot climates which give big alcohol. England is not dissimilar to Champagne and Burgundy in climatic and geological terms.
However one thing the English Wine industry lacks is volume. Last year the UK produced over 3 million bottles (only the 3rd time this volume has been achieved in the last 10 years). And with vineyard planting on the increase this number may top 4 million by 2020. However, this does not even make 1% of the annual consumption of wine in this country!
Like many vineyards of its era (late 1980s), Brightwell was planted with mainly German varieties initially, which were guaranteed to give us ripe grapes in our cooler climate. However, as we have discovered that more classic varieties can ripen here, we have planted Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and others. This is due to the realisation that these grapes do very well in our cool climate, and we use them to make classic style Sparkling wines. We can’t grow Cabernet Sauvignon because they won’t ripen fully, but Chardonnay, Bacchus, Huxelrebe and Pinot Noir will not only ripen, but also give us a complex mixture of fruit sugars and acids that produce crisp, refreshing wines with a delicate complexity and fresh fruit flavour. (Note New Zealand was also mainly growing German grape varieties until the 1970s when they realised that they could be more adventurous).
Grapes have been grown in this country since Roman times but with the climate change event that started in the 14th Century, cooling the climate, and then the dissolution of the monasteries (the universities of their age which taught many of the craft industries) by Henry VIII in the 1500’s, vineyards went into decline. Finally the reign of Oliver Cromwell banned alcohol (and everything else that was fun, including Christmas). So growing grapes and wine making ceased in this country (despite the bottle fermented method of making Sparkling wine being invented in England by Christopher Merret at this time – and then copied in Champagne).
The resurgence of vineyards in England started in the 1960s with hobbyists and retired folk ‘having a go’. Through these ‘pioneers’ the realisation came that grape growing and wine making was possible in this country and that it was not climate that denied us a wine industry but historical circumstance. Now, with the proper equipment and well trained viticulturalists and wine makers, England is proving that it can produce quality wines.
The first plantings of vines at Brightwell Vineyard were made in 1987, and the early harvests were sold to larger producers and into a co-operative. In 2000 the vineyard changed hands and adopted its parish name of Brightwell. Following restoration and significant replanting, the vineyard now produces 4 still white wines, 1 rose, 1 red and 1 Sparkling Chardonnay wine. We have competed our wines internationally and are proud to have received Gold and Silver medals in European contests in France. We are now the largest vineyard in Oxfordshire and are planning further development. We hope you will visit us during the year to see the progress of a unique and growing enterprise in the parish.