The WI: Inspiring Women

BENSON

IN April all members attended the first meeting of the new WI year, which is year 97 for Benson WI.

The meeting included a very interesting and informative talk by the chair of Sustainable Wallingford.

It is always good to hear from local groups, to hear about their aims and current projects, most of which are not too far away from the thoughts of WI members.

The current WI campaign resolution “Cleaner rivers for people and wildlife” was discussed and members voted unanimously to give it their support.

This decision will be forwarded for inclusion in the voting at the National Federation’s annual meeting this month.

The resolution is particularly relevant in Benson where there is ongoing concern over instances of sewage dispersal into the Thames.

Some of our members attended a speakers’ selection day organised by the Oxfordshire Federation at Benson parish hall.

In May members will again be in the parish hall to enjoy another Oxfordshire Federation talk by Francis Carlew on “Pearls and the Art Deco”, a fascinating glimpse into a world of jewellery with some entertaining storytelling.

These events are always well attended and a great chance to mingle with other members from around the county.

The next monthly meeting will be on Wednesday, May 24 at 2.30pm in the parish hall.

We will be welcoming two of our local police community support officers to talk to us about scams and other local issues.

Visitors are very welcome. If you would like to join us at any time, please call the
secretary on (01491) 837885 or email bensonwi@
oxfordshirewi.co.uk

Sue Brown

CAVERSHAM

IN April, we welcomed Dr Andy Kempe, who is a keeper of the history of Greenham Common and helps at the control tower, which is now an open heritage venue with exhibitions and a café.

He spoke about the history of the area, going back to Roman times, and told us the story up to today.

It was very interesting to hear about such significant change in the use of the site and its return to use as common land.

We attended the Berkshire Federation’s annual meeting, which was held in Reading.

We heard about all the great work that goes on across the county, what is happening at the West Berkshire recycling centre and the career of a woman executive director of engineering, who holds a visiting professorship at Cranfield University.

Why not find us or your nearest WI? For more information, visit thewi.org.uk

Guests are always welcome at our meetings. Next month we will be welcoming back a fantastic speaker, who will speak about his time as a tourist guide.

Feel free to join us at 7.30pm on the third Thursday of the month. You can get in touch by emailing cavershamwi@berkshirewi.
co.uk

Claire Elliott

CHAZEY

APRIL was our birthday meeting and we were entertained by Richard Marks with a very informative talk on “The coming of trains to Reading”.

Our members enjoyed the talk very much. After questions tea and cake were enjoyed as usual.

The report of the last meeting was approved and there were no matters arising. Our president noted that there is a speakers’ meeting coming up and three tickets have been ordered for Hazel, Valerie and Helen.

Our summer outing in June is a visit to Chawton House in Hampshire and then on to the Jane Austen Museum in the afternoon. Hopefully refreshments will be provided.

At the Berkshire Federation’s annual meeting a draw was to be held for the Margaret Latham bursaries to be used for any educational course, three prizes in all.

Hazel has gathered in the WI bulb orders from our members.

Our members manned the Caversham Court Gardens kiosk for three days. The first day was extremely wet but the next two days were reasonable.

Our next duty is in June and we hope for good weather on all three days.

The raffle was drawn and the meeting closed. Our next meeting was to be held at St Andrew’s Church hall in Albert Road, Caversham Heights, on Friday, May 5 at 2.30pm.

Carol Briscoe

CLEEVE-BY-GORING

YOU might look twice if you saw his figure lurking in a hedge but fortunately it is Simon Booker, local wildlife photographer.

Simon showed us some tricks of the trade, including how to camouflage and break up an outline, both for man and camera.

His talk was illustrated with lovely shots and short films of local wildlife and afterwards members were able to buy beautiful greetings cards.

While I’m sure many of us were inspired to try harder with our cameras, as this seems to involve a lot of patience and sitting in cold muddy fields, I suspect Simon will have few competitors.

Our competition was for a bag made of paper and one of the winning entries was by Krys Knox.

During the month nine members enjoyed a lunch in Henley and agreed to form a quarterly dining club, another enjoyable social occasion.

Three members assisted with refreshments at the Goring repair workshop.

Our next outing is to a talk called “Pearls and the Art Deco” at Benson.

Altogether, a busy period.

Chris Cox

COCKPOLE GREEN

ON Wednesday, April 19 joint presidents Judi Rowlands and Helen Perry welcomed members to the meeting and were pleased to welcome back in person our guest speaker Ailsa Claybourn whom we last saw via Zoom.

Her talk was entitled “Enchanted woodlands” and Ailsa shared her passion and enthusiasm for woodlands and their contribution to our environment and wellbeing. There is growing scientific evidence that woods and trees are good for our health.

Trees release chemicals called phytoncides, which have a protective antimicrobial effect on the human body, boosting the immune system.

Other benefits include improved circulation, lower blood pressure and lower stress hormone levels as well as antibiotic, antifungal and anti-rheumatic effects.

Trees recycle our water, clean our air and help regulate global temperatures and climate.

A walk in the woods is rewarding at any time of the year as each season brings its own colours, flora and fauna.

Dog’s mercury flowers in February followed by wood anemone, then comes sweet violet and more, including beautiful bluebells.

We heard about how different trees flower according to how they are pollinated, by wind or insect.

Ailsa said that we have some ancient trees in Britain, the oldest yews being between 2,000 and 3,000 years old, although some could be as much as 5,000 years old and are still thriving and have new shoots.

We also have 3,400 ancient oaks thanks to the Normans claiming the forests for hunting. There are only 2,000 ancient oaks in the rest of Europe.

The Norman hunting forests have survived for centuries due to our history of land ownership so not as many ancient trees were felled to fuel the industrial revolution as were used on the continent.

The Major Oak in Sherwood Forest is up to 1,000 years old. Elizabeth I is said to have had a picnic beneath it.

In Lincolnshire, the Bowthorpe Oak is believed to be more than 1,000 years old. Its hollow trunk has been used for parties.

Besides our ancient native trees, we learned of the relative newcomers, such as the sweet chestnut imported by the Romans and the sycamore, which is also thought to have been introduced by the Romans but other reports suggest it was introduced in the Tudor era around the 1500s.

Each tree is a habitat for hundreds of living things, including birds, beetles, bats, fungi, squirrels and spiders.

Collectively, the woods provide a home and shelter for a host of wildlife, including animals such as the hazel dormouse, hedgehogs, foxes, badgers and deer.

Amazingly, we learned that trees “talk” and share resources right under our feet, using a fungal network nicknamed the “wood wide web”.

Some plants use the system to support their offspring, while others hijack it to sabotage their rivals, predators and diseases.

Members thoroughly enjoyed Ailsa’s stimulating talk and were left wanting to know more.

After the meeting there was a bring and buy sale and a delicious tea prepared by Liz Cope and Sue Griffiths.

Our next meeting will take place at Crazies Hill village hall on Wednesday, May 17 at 2.30pm. Our speaker will be Jenny Westmoreland, of Berkshire Age UK, who will give a talk about dementia.

She comes highly recommended and her talk will be full of interesting information and anecdotes to lighten the afternoon.

New members are very welcome to join us.

Sheila Brockelbank

HARPSDEN-GREYS

WE are very happy to announce the formation of a new WI to be known as Harpsden-Greys.

A committee is in the process of being formed and we all look forward to the future of a vibrant and exciting group.

Janet Kingdon, our WI adviser, attended the April meeting and formally elected Suzanna Rose as president for the coming year.

The resolution to be put before the annual meeting of the National Federation in Cardiff in May focuses on the quality of the rivers in the UK and the sewage that is being piped into them.

Our delegate from Burnt Cakes WI will be asked to cast our vote in favour of action being taken to clean up rivers and promote applications for official designated bathing sites.

The book club and walking group will continue with their activities in May.

The speaker was Jayne Windmill who took us on a very rapid walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

She embarked on this walk with her husband and her talk was illustrated with some beautiful slides of the landscape and wildlife.

When Jayne and her husband eventually neared the end of their journey they were excited to see in the far distance the Orkneys and could declare that, after walking 1,180 miles, they were “nearly there”.

The competition was for a holiday memento and Di Painter and Jasmine Weaver were joint winners.

On May 10 the speaker will be Sue Ryan, founder of the Henley Literary Festival, and the competition will be for “My favourite book”.

The meeting will take place in Harpsden village hall, commencing at 2.30pm. Do come along and see what the new WI has to offer.

Judith Young

HOT (HENLEY-ON-THAMES)

OUR April meeting was with Donna Thomson, from Beauty Revived, a local beauty therapist who came to show us tips and tricks on how we could look even lovelier than we are.

Our current president was “volunteered” by a past president to be made over and the results were warmly received by the members.

We discussed why we felt make-up was important to us, or not, with some members never daring to step foot outside the house without a bit of “slap” on to others who were more than happy bare-faced or with just a slick of mascara and a smudge of lippy.

We all agreed Donna had done a fine job in making the president look brighter even with each eye given a different look using a lovely iridescent teal on one and a creamy toffee on the other!

The following day we spent the afternoon at Oakengrove vineyard in Fawley.

Phil Rossi, the owner, left us in the very capable hands of Sterl, who showed us the many vines and ways of growing and maintaining the different grape varieties across the various wine-growing regions of the world.

Many of the members had visited these areas and so we were quite knowledgeable about the wines they produced.

As the tour progressed, we went in the newly- refurbished tasting room where we were supplied with very generous tasting samples of white, rosé, sparkling and red wines.

We all agreed Oakengrove was a lovely place to visit and the terrace overlooking the vines will, I’m sure, be revisited soon as the food platters looked delicious and the forthcoming music events fun.

We had a stall at the Henley May Fayre on Monday selling cakes and craft items.

Our next meeting will be about “Clean rivers for people and wildlife”, a resolution for the National Federation’s annual meeting. This will be followed by a talk from We Weed about women as professional gardeners.

Nicola Taylor

MILL GREEN, WARGRAVE

OUR annual meeting was held on April 5 at the Church Centre in Wargrave.

President Gina Foden welcomed members to the meeting.

She and the committee were unanimously elected for a further year.

Sue Drew was retiring and was thanked for her enormous contribution.

The treasurer then presented the financial statement, which was unanimously accepted.

The secretary read the committee’s annual report. The president praised the committee, particularly Carol Evans for organising such a busy and varied programme. The report was unanimously adopted by members.

There followed a talk by Peter Harman who spoke about “Parks — public, private, national and royal” and included special reference to a local treasure, Forbury Park in Reading.

Thank you, Peter. We are so fortunate in this country to have such a heritage.

At the next meeting on May 3 Trevor Ottlewski was to talk about “Changes in the English home”.

New members will be extremely welcome at our meetings.

Glynis Gothard

PEPPARD

AT our April meeting members and visitors were all active participants in learning some of the skills required to paint portraits under the guidance and expertise of Robbie Horsepool.

Tentative at the start, we were advised to concentrate on the eyes, nose and mouth of the sitter nearest us, which was quite a challenge for beginners.

Fortunately, we do have some talented ladies and one member in particular drew a very successful likeness of her daughter from a photograph.

We had our customary delicious tea and enjoyed catching up and there was excited chatter about the pending spring and summer plans.

Our next meeting will be at Peppard War Memorial Hall on Wednesday, May 10 at 2pm when Barry Wood will enlighten us with his talk on “The history of Henley”. Visitors are most welcome.

Elaine Douglas

REMENHAM

MEMBERS enjoyed “the glory of the garden” when they explored the wonderful gardens of Cornwall with accomplished photographer Jean Sheppard.

We saw the mixed herbaceous borders and the colourful planting in the parterres at Lanhydrock and Trelissick.

The exploration and development of the Lost Gardens of Heligan has resulted in a marvellously diverse collection of plants to suit every area of the hidden valley.

We saw an enormous variety of plants and flowers in the temperate and tropical biodomes at the Eden Project as well as all the experimental work going on in the outside areas.

It was a fascinating exploration of plants and gardens.

Jean then judged a selection of members’ holiday photographs and chose Judy Palmer as the winner.

On April 17 we met at Toad Hall garden centre for coffee and cake and much chat.

The book club, which has been reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, met on April 28.

The group meeting, when we meet up with other local WIs, will be held on May 11.

The speaker will be Bob Sinfield, an actor and writer who has written scripts for Lenny Henry and Rory Bremner, among others.

On May 18 we will hold a coronation barbecue — steaks, sausages, salads, delicious desserts, cocktails and Prosecco. A great end to all the festivities.

Our next meeting will be on May 15 (a week later than usual) when we will hear how the local criminal justice system works.

Daphne Austen

ROSEHILL LADIES

FOLLOWING the closure of Rosehill WI, we have decided to start our own group and we are called Rosehill Ladies.

We held our first meeting on April 5 and will continue to meet at St Barnabas Church Hall, Emmer Green, on the first Wednesday of the month at 2pm.

We were all welcomed by Sue Green, who will be our treasurer as we need someone in charge of finances.

As yet, we do not have a working committee but anyone who wishes to organise anything in the future will be most welcome.

After a while of chatting among ourselves, we were introduced to our speaker David Howell, who is churchwarden at St Barnabas.

He gave an extremely interesting talk about the street pastors, of which he is one.

These volunteers are out on the streets of Reading in the wee small hours to help anyone who needs their assistance, particularly those who have had too much to drink and have no idea of the date or time.

A wonderful organisation and may it continue. Thank you very much, David.

Some of the clubs we had in WI will continue.

The book club met at Barbara’s house and the next meeting will take place at Ryszarda’s house in Brooklyn Drive on May 9.

The lunch club met at the Toby Carvery. At the moment there are no suitable films on the circuit for the cinema club to see.

The afternoon ended with the usual cup of tea and biscuit before the raffle was drawn.

Sue thanked everyone for coming and hoped that we would continue.

Our next meeting was due to be held on Wednesday (May 3). If anyone would like to join a friendly group of people once a month, we would make you very welcome. If you did decide to join, it would cost only £30 for the whole year, so give it a thought.

Jean Hewitt

SHIPLAKE

APRIL’S meeting was chaired by Fiona Cooke in the absence of our president, Sue Lines. Fiona welcomed back Shirley Abraham after her accident.

Members were reminded to pay their subs, which were due this month.

In response to “The Big Help Out” request by King Charles to celebrate his coronation, Shiplake WI is going to tidy up the gardens at the memorial hall, where we meet. Members will work from 10am to noon on Monday, May 8.

The knitted crown box topper embroidered with
C III R was to be placed on the Shiplake Corner Shop postbox on Monday, May 1.

Members were reminded of the upcoming outings.

A musical performance by Mike Sterling is to be held at the memorial hall on Saturday, June 10 at 6.15pm. Tickets are available from Fiona Cooke.

Our speaker was Peter Hague who talked about West Wycombe Hall and the Dashwoods.

The house has been owned by the National Trust since 1943 but the contents and furniture are still owned by the Dashwood family.

This was a fascinating talk accompanied by slides, giving an insight into the history of the house and the family, including the Hellfire Club.

Our next meeting will be held at the memorial hall on Wednesday, May 17 at 2.30pm. All welcome.

Jean Buckett

SONNING COMMON

THE April meeting opened with news and reports.

Penny Noble reported back on the Oxfordshire Federation’s annual meeting held at Worton Hall in
Cassington.

The Federation reported that income was up from previous years but so was expenditure, so the option of purchasing offices rather than renting was to be explored.

There were 46 entries for the Pat Eades memorial challenge programme competition and Sonning Common was one of three highly commended entrants and received a framed certificate.

A presentation was given by Trading Standards about scams with examples of true life stories, some from well-known people in the media.

Following this, a very interesting talk was given by Angela Gallop, a forensic scientist, who had worked on the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.

She set up her own company to educate and improve the competence of police forensic teams.

Two Sonning Common WI quiz teams, the Everhopefuls and the Desperados, gave their reports on the recent quiz evening, which raised a welcome £300 for the local primary school.

Carol Townhill introduced our speaker, Marilyn Mowat, one of our members, whose subject was “Lace-making: it’s not as hard as you think”.

She began by outlining the history of lace-making, explaining that fashion has always driven its production from 16th century ruffs and collars to Queen Victoria who regenerated its use following the design of her wedding dress.

The industrial revolution brought a profound change in lace-making with the advent of machine-made lace.

Handmade lace ceased to be a viable cottage industry and today is kept alive through hobbyists and crafters.

The importance of pins was explained from the use of fish bones to the importation of French brass pins.

The value of good rust-free pins is recognised in the saying: “See a pin and pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck”.

Marilyn mentioned the well-known lace-making regions of Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire and the famous Honiton lace.

She explained the different types of lace and how they would be used.

On display were many examples of her own handiwork and she elaborated on her love of colour and how she incorporates this into her designs and how she displays and presents her finished articles.

Marilyn described how she went from lace student to teaching the craft for many years and how she still explores and expands her knowledge by developing her own designs.

The members were held enthralled by this fascinating talk and Marilyn happily answered questions.

Members were then invited to view her handiwork and “have a go” at a project set out on a cushion.

On April 29 a group of members set up three postbox toppers to commemorate the coronation of King Charles III.

As this is such a special occasion and so as many residents as possible could enjoy the crafters’ efforts, an extra couple of toppers were made.

They are displayed in Widmore Lane, Westleigh Drive and Wood Lane close to the village hall.

We host a coffee morning at the village hall that is open to all. These usually take place on the first Wednesday of each month, except August.

Our next gathering will the resolutions meeting on May 18, which will conclude with a beetle drive.

For more information about Sonning Common WI, please email Carol at sonningcommonwi@
oxfordshire.co.uk

Lesley Davis

STOKE ROW

OUR April meeting, the first of our new programme, was a “come and try” evening with seven of our members demonstrating their skills and an opportunity for all to have a go at the activities.

Members were given tips on watercolour painting as they decorated simple cards.

There was also papercraft, crochet and knitting to try as well as rag wreaths to knot and flowers to stitch from organza and buttons.

The knitted crowns were really quite novel and so appropriate.

We also had a wonderful display of lace, both modern and antique, and a demonstration of bobbin lace- making.

There was tea and chat galore alongside the activities and everyone agreed it had been a fun evening.

Our thanks to Alison for the idea and organisation.

At the end of the month there was a bluebell walk through the woodland around Woodcote organised by one of our members.

The bluebells are a little late flowering this year but still provided a beautiful display all along the route.

The walk was followed by tea and delicious homemade cake back at our walk leader’s house. Thank you, Sandra, for a brilliant afternoon.

On May 16 it will be our resolutions meeting when we will decide if we want to support this year’s WI national campaign for “Clean rivers for people and wildlife”.

To help us decide, our speaker will be Stephen Haywood, of the Thames Rivers Trust.

There will also be more walking and dining events in May, a visit in June to a wind and solar farm, swimming and coffee and chat sessions on Zoom as well as our
regular activities of craft and book club.

Why not come along to one of our meetings? You would be most welcome. You can ccntact our secretary via email on stokerowwi
@oxfordshirewi.co.uk

Denise Stanworth

WHITCHURCH HILL

EVERYONE who was able to turned out to celebrate our 70th birthday in April.

White linen adorned the dining tables, while wine glasses and appropriately coloured napkins added to the decor.

Jerusalem rang from the rafters followed by a lovely poetic ditty from our treasurer Tricia Clapp specially written to mark this special occasion. Essential business was conducted before we got on to the main event of the day — a superb lunch supplied by our committee, supported by a stunning array of desserts from members

To finish off we enjoyed a specially made birthday cake courtesy of our president Sarah Moody.

The first slice was cut by two of our longest-serving members, May Cairns and Theresa Elsome, who between them have more than 100 years in the WI.

The flower of the month competition was fiercely contested with Liz Gibson taking the honours while Judith Johns and Sheila Griggs took home a raffle prize each.

Over the following few days emails bounced back and forth between participants confirming how much everyone had enjoyed the event. Here’s to the next 70 years.

Sally Bergmann

WOODCOTE

SALLY Lambert welcomed members, visitors and our speaker John Kinory to the April meeting.

Celebrating their birthdays were Margaret Carter and Pat Hunt and we hope they enjoyed their celebrations. The bloom of the month competition winner for this year was Carole Shelley-Allen who was presented with vouchers.

We have the new bulb catalogue with plenty of inspiration for next year.

Shirley Bryant has printed the programmes of events and speakers for the next year which we hope our members will enjoy.

Shirley is our group convenor and told us about the next group meeting, which will be at South Stoke on Wednesday, June 28.

The speakers will talk about “Our life on the canals” and this will be followed by a ploughman’s lunch.

Our speaker was John Kinory who told us of his times as a film extra (with photographs of the films he had taken part in), the long hours involved and locations where filming had taken place.

We had a delicious tea thanks to Sandra Dickson and Doreen Knox.

The bloom of the month winner was a wallflower and the theatre programme winner was the 50th anniversary souvenir programme for The Mousetrap.

Next month will be our resolutions meeting which will be followed by a quiz.

We meet at Woodcote village hall on the third Wednesday of the month at 2.30pm. Please come and join us.

Judy Williams