February/March 2005
John Crowther 1917 - 2005
John was born in Chelsea, the youngest of three brothers, and attended Dulwich College as a teenager. When he left school he studied as an apprentice quantity surveyor with a firm in London.
When war came in 1939, he was immediately drafted into the Army. One of his first postings was helping to guard Detling Aerodrome in Kent, which was, of course, involved in the Battle of Britain! Sent overseas, he was in the Eighth Army and fought in the battle of El Alamein. Injured at Tripoli, he was sent back to GHQ in Alexandria where he met his future wife, Joyce, also in the army. John and Joyce spent 30 years living near Maidenhead when John had his quantity surveyor practice in Reading. They moved to Brightwell in 1987, with John retiring three years later.
It was then that they both became more involved in village life and worked hard on behalf of the church in Brightwell. John served on the Parochial Church Council for many years, seven of them as a churchwarden, and his wide-ranging knowledge was very helpful on many occasions. He also served for many years as a trustee of several Brightwell Charitable Trusts.
It is certainly worth recording that it was John¹s inspirational idea to stage a son-et-lumière in St Agatha's church, based on the histories of Brightwell and Sotwell, as part of the village's millennium celebrations. And, of course, we must mention his crosswords, which appeared from time to time in The Villager and were much appreciated. Yes we will miss him.
Roy Thorpe
Evelyn Smith 1915 - 2005
Evelyn was born in Mackney on February 16th, 1915, one of seven children. She lived all her life in Brightwell and was educated at the village school. On leaving school she went into service locally. During the war she worked at Wilders, making the journey on foot from Mackney.
After the war she worked in Miss Glover's Wool Shop and enjoyed knitting which she used to good effect for charity. She married Frank Smith in 1952 and devoted much time to the making of jams, chutney and cakes, knitted garments and dressed dolls. She was a committed worker for the Red Cross and with her band of helpers raised thousands of pounds at the annual coffee mornings and bazaars. She was a member of the League of Friends of Wallingford Hospital, The British Legion and many other village organisations. She will be much missed.
Belinda Lee-Jones
Services to the Community - Celia Collett MBE
The New Year's Honours List on 31 December 2004 announced that Celia Collett has been awarded the MBE for services to the community in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell. I am sure that everyone wishes to congratulate Celia on this well deserved accolade.
Celia has lived all her life in Brightwell. During that time she has been able constantly to see the needs of our community and work with others to satisfy as many of these needs as she can.
Shirley and I have lived in the Parish for a mere 17 years but since I retired in 1993 we have worked with Celia on a number of activities. The first occasion was with the Scouts, which she has supported for many years, where we were involved in setting up a special function in the Wallingford Regal Centre. In 1994, after I had been appointed Clerk to the Council, I worked closely with her, as she was Chairman of the Parish Council. I was able to admire her skills of listening and understanding. She is so good at calming down agitated people, establishing a joint course of action and then making it happen. However busy she is, she always makes time to listen to people, whether it is in the street or at a meeting. We then worked together for a period as Governors of Brightwell School and Celia played a major role in the planning and the funding of the recent major extension of its buildings.
A more recent project has been the preparation of the Parish Plan. Celia encouraged the Council to develop a Vital Villages initiative and then as Chairman of the Steering Group was most positive in her leadership by enthusing many parishioners, both young and old. We have all seen the result of this effort, which was the publication of the Parish Plan at the required time in March 2004.
Over a considerable period Celia has played a major role in working for Save the Children. As well as the annual house to house collections, she has shown great initiative in introducing a number of fund raising activities which are fun and indeed have become regular Parish events: particularly the Christmas Carols round the tree on The Square, the Charity Cricket match of the Brightwell cricket team versus the Red Lion and more recently the Market stalls on The Square.
Shirley and I feel very privileged to have worked with Celia and hope to continue to do so for many years to come.
Tony Hayzelden
News from Brightwell School
Well done to Miss Shinner and her Teaching Assistants in Class 1 for a splendid nativity production, It's A Party. Thanks also to parents Mrs Walley for her brilliant work on costumes and to Mrs Murton and Mrs Turner for contributing to our 'lighting system'. Additional musical contributions to the festive season included a Talent Show at school, and a small group of children sang at the Village Carol Evening. Unfortunately, our end of term Christmas Service was hit by atrocious weather and took place at school rather than St Agatha's church. Mrs Russell led the school in a reflective act of worship on the meaning of Christmas. Other seasonal activities included a Christmas Hat competition and a Disco.
Our Year 5 and 6 children spent a week at one of the Local Education Authority's outdoor learning centres at Yenworthy in Devon. They enjoyed a range of activities from walking to rock climbing. They had planned to wind surf but despite a very dry and mild week for December, the water was too cold- bah humbug! Year 4 children visited the Henley River Museum and had fun learning about the history of the river including the Royal Regatta, different types of river craft, and the dangers associated with water. There is also a superb 'walk through' story of Tales of the River Bank (Toad of Toad Hall and his escapades). Fantastically created scenes support the telling of the story. If you have never been to the museum, it is a 'must visit' place. At the beginning of December a theatre group presented Rumplestiltskin as a comic production to the whole school. Some staff found it quite frightening but the children loved it.
For the size of our school we run a surprisingly extensive array of school clubs, including art, football, netball, cookery, French, Spanish, chess, 'bionicles', piano, dance and drama. I deeply appreciate the time that staff, parents and other members of the community give voluntarily to the school.
This month we launched Values Education, a two-year programme where we focus as a whole school community on a chosen value. Our values for January and February are appreciation and caring respectively. We also launched our Healthy Schools initiative with an afternoon of artwork to promote healthy snacks and lunch boxes.
Sadly, we finally said farewell to Mr Royston Frewin, one of our Caretaker/Cleaners. He was a great ambassador for our school and will be sadly missed. We wish him a long and happy retirement.
Roger Grant
From the Vicar
This must be my good-bye letter. In case the Brightwell grape-vine has failed you, I need to announce that I will be leaving at the end of February and taking up a new post in the Diocese from the beginning of April. My new job will be as a "Parish Development Adviser" rather than as a parish priest, with a special emphasis on promoting mission and evangelism in the Berkshire Archdeaconry. It is a big area and I shall be spending much more time in a car and probably far less on my bike (which may be a relief for those who have expressed shock on recognising a vicar underneath the cycle helmet).
I am looking forward to the new challenges - of which there are many - but I shall miss Brightwell-cum-Sotwell enormously. I want to thank you for the warmth you have shown me and the trust that you placed in me. I have seen the church grow in confidence over the last couple of years, having fun and, at St Agatha's, looking to improve the building to make it more of an amenity to the whole village. If you haven't called in on the Thursday Coffee Morning yet, do give it a try; you'll find all sorts of people to chat to - and the cakes are fantastic.
I shall, like an ageing pop group, be doing a farewell tour of the parishes: a.. Sunday 20 February at 11am: Parish Communion at Crowmarsh Gifford. b.. Wednesday 23 February at 7.30pm in Crowmarsh village Hall: Team Farewell. c.. Sunday 27 February at 9.30am: All Age Communion at St Agatha's. d.. Sunday 27 February at 10.45am: Parish Farewell in the Village Hall.
It would be lovely to see as many of you as possible at these events; please do feel welcome at church, even if you are not a regular church-goer. I have always enjoyed occasions like Remembrance Day, or the Jubilee where village and church come together in the "house of God".
It will take some time to appoint a new Team Vicar and so David Rice, our Team Rector, will be the person to contact about Baptisms, Weddings, Funerals and memorial stones. His address is: The Revd. David Rice, 22 Castle Street, Wallingford OX10 8DW. You can call him on 202188 and email him on david.rice5@ntlworld.com His usual day off is Saturday.
I would like to leave you with a prayer of blessing (mostly from St. Paul): Live in peace, be very courageous, hold on to what is good, do not return evil for evil, strengthen the faint-hearted, support the weak, help the afflicted, honour all people, love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit; and may the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you always. Amen. With love,
Janet Russell
Farming Update Sherwood Farm
The festive period and the twelve days of Christmas made me think of other events in 2004 that came in dozens. One that particularly stands out is that of Farm Inspections. There is no doubt that some are justified for reasons of food quality, marketing and safety. Others, however, leave us in open-mouthed wonder as well as bringing out the cynical view. So at times in 2004 it has been possible to understand a little of how General Custer must have felt surrounded by all those Red Indians.
We are, of course, not alone, indeed, a farming friend was recently recounting to us how in space of a couple of weeks he had been overrun! Firstly a visit from the Trading Standards just to check the serial number on his farm weighbridge. Within a couple of days another official from Trading Standards arrived to check all was well with his farm mill and mix unit where he prepares feed for his pigs. The mill and mix unit and feed records are also checked regularly by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, as minerals and, occasionally, medicines are mixed in some of the batches of feed he produces. On the farm we were shown the location of this equipment, yes, not 50 yards apart.
Not far from the weighbridge is a new piece of equipment, an incinerator, now particularly necessary for pig farmers, as it is no longer allowable to bury dead animals on farm. The incinerator, which apparently uses an obscene amount of fuel, had had a visit from a Defra Vet to check that its contents were being properly burnt. This was followed by an Environment Agency official to check that the resultant ash was being spread in accordance with the farm Waste Management Plan. He has had many other visits during the year, but was sure that he had been most impressed by an "Assured British Pigs" inspector who, during his inspection of the farm¹s pigs, was simultaneously inspected by a supermarket inspector, who carefully inspected that the ABP inspector was competently carrying out his inspection of the pigs that need to be inspected. We have inspections from two assurance bodies. The National Dairy Farm Assurance Scheme (NDFAS): annually an inspector spends several hours checking all aspects of milk production. Records are examined and boxes ticked - topics include: feed records, animal health records (including a parasitic control plan, a broken needle policy), the soap we wash our hands with, calf nutrition and a waste management plan etc... Our latest guideline booklet runs to 109 pages ...
The Assured Combinable Crops Scheme (ACCS) runs on much the same lines - using a farm audit to check compliance. All aspects of our crop production are examined from the record of washing the combine, to the monitoring and traceability of grain in store, crop protection and fertiliser application records. Many outlets will only accept grain from assured farms. Safety-wise our insurers send out two separate inspectors, one to check the condition of air receiving vessels on the farm, another to check that the farm materials handlers are in good working order.
We also received a visit from the Environment Agency to discuss new legislation concerning fertiliser and animal waste management plans (both topics covered by both NDFAS and ACCS inspectors). This should take "about an hour" - three hours later and the Agency representative is happily on his way - saying "I've learned a lot I didn't know", terms such as mixed farming and rotations added to his vocabulary. A lady from Defra called one day to "check we were a dairy farm" - Patricia showed her the bulk milk tank and some cows - which seemed to please her. Two officials from the Health and Safety Executive paid us a visit on a very wet afternoon - one was inspecting, the other was learning agriculture. They highlighted a couple of small points to attend to - this was done and a letter sent confirming action taken. A month later another official is on the phone wishing to visit when asked what had changed in a month, he seemed surprised that he had not been told we had already been inspected. The Trading Standards visited us to check our usage of animal feeds as we mix both bought in and home-grown ingredients for the various cattle rations that are needed for our stock (also covered by NDFAS).
The farm¹s crop sprayer - a self-propelled machine - has been visited, inspected and tested for correct function. It has been issued the equivalent of an MOT. The tractor mounted fertiliser distributor has also had a separate check to ensure its accuracy of application and spread pattern are correct. Both of these inspections have the potential to save money and environmental damage by helping to eliminate inaccurate applications of products. The farm's record of animal movements both on and off the farm have also been checked by Trading Standards.
December, as normal, has seen correspondence with the local IACS (Integrated Administration and Control System) Office in Reading. All claims have to be submitted by 15 May deadline each year. These claims are vigorously checked and any issues to be resolved see the fax machine busy. So, another year over, a new year beginning - a time for wishes, resolutions ...as well as an answer-phone message from a lady wishing to inspect the work we have carried out under the Country Stewardship scheme...
Angus Dart