Grayshott Village Archive

"Notes and News : May / June 2008"

 

General Matters and Reminders.

Annual General Meeting :  The next annual general meeting of the Archive will be held in the Small Hall at the Village Hall on Wednesday, June 18th, 7.30 for 8 pm. There will be light refreshments available but this year there will not be a speaker as the committee feels that this is now more appropriate for the Friends evenings planned for October and the following April.

Click Here to View Agenda

Friends Evenings : we are pleased to confirm that the next will be on Tuesday, October 28th at Grayshott Pottery and that Tim Winter from Haslemere will give a  talk on Collecting Postcards to do with Local History.

New Projects and News.

The next article to appear on our web site will be ‘Public Transport in Grayshott’ outlining the history of local ‘bus services and operators and carriers businesses.  Following in due course will be ‘Grayshott in India’, the facts behind how a very large 1920’s house in Madras, India became named ‘Grayshott’, and an interesting survey and report on some of the more well known/famous people buried in St.Luke’s churchyard.   
 
Recent examination of Grayshott School admission registers,  now in the safe keeping of the Surrey History Centre, Woking ( where they are available for public inspection), has revealed that in 1914 /15 several Belgium refugees came to live in Grayshott and attended Grayshott school. We will be publishing a list of names of these children in due course and hope this may be of help to any Belgium families interested in their family history.

We have received an interesting enquiry from Mrs. Sue Abel regarding a close friend of her late father who were together on active service during World War 2. The name of the friend would appear to be R. Barker, this is borne out by an inscription on a silver cigarette case and inside a small piece of paper giving the address of 8 Headley Road, Grayshott, now in the possession of Mrs. Abel. The name R. Barker is given on the Roll of Honour in St. Luke’s church as having served in WW2.  A. J. Barker is recorded as being at 2 Hindhead Terrace in 1917 and ran a Clock Repair and Jewellers business from there until the mid 1960’s by which time the address had changed to 5 Headley Road. We would be pleased to hear from anybody who has any recollections of Jimmy Barkers shop or family. It would seem likely that the ‘8’ on the piece of paper is an error for ‘5’  as there is no ‘8 Headley Road’.

Finally, ‘April-snow’ in Grayshott – an infrequent event!

Sunday morning April 6th 2008 brought to Grayshott a somewhat unusual weather condition.

Between the hours of 7.30 and 9.30am some 100mm (4”) of snow fell.

During the previous day the wind had changed around to the North and bringing with it a cold front; this resulted in widespread snowfall across the country during the early hours of April 6th.  Although snow flurries continued throughout the day a rapid thaw set in after 10am and by nightfall most of the snow had melted.  There was minimal disruption to local traffic. A considerable frost ensued for the next two nights.

The last record of such general and consequential amount of snow falling in this locality was in 1908.

I took the following photographs around 9.30am.

 

Richard Peskett

May 2008.