Gaydon Parish Magazine March 2024
index of magazines
Gaydon Gazette for March
Book Club Mon 4th at 7pm Village Hall
Parish Council Tues 5th at 7.30pm Village Hall
Clubbercise Thurs 7th at 7pm Village Hall
Coffee Morning Sat 9th at 11am Village Hall
Village Hall C'tee Mon 11th at 8pm Village Hall
Mobile Library Fri 15th at 2.40pm Phone Box
*SouperSaturday Sat 23rd at 12.30pm Village Hall*
Tai Chi Wednesdays at 7pm Village Hall
Launch of Clubbercise
Gaydon Village Hall
Thursday 7 March from 7pm-7.45pm, £6 per session, PAYG - pay-as-you-go. Glow sticks available to borrow; or buy your own for £6.
*SouperSaturday*
23 March 12.30-3pm in the Village Hall, Home-made Soups and Crusty Bread. The Millennium Group are holding this event in order to raise funds for the over-65s Christmas lunch. There will be a variety of delicious home-made soups accompanied by crusty bread from the Village Community Shop.
Prices as follows: £3 for soup and bread, £1 tea and coffee, 50p soft drinks DP
Coffee Morning
Saturday 9th March at 11am in the Village Hall. Raffle, Book Stall, Bric-a-brac, Bring & Buy, Coffee and Biscuits 50p. All money raised is for Church funds.
Parish Council News
Gaydon Parish Council met on Tuesday 13 February, the meeting having been re-arranged from the 6th owing to councillor availability.
Parish Assembly
The Parish Assembly meeting for this year will be on Tuesday 16 April. Local businesses and volunteer groups are invited to come along and update the parish on their year. Contact the parish clerk for details.
Drain clearance
Conversations with the County Council have been had about clearing the drains and gulleys. This is still to be completed and so County Councillor Chris Mills was asked to find out when it would happen.
Planning
Planning application 23/02634/FUL British Motor Museum was discussed. The original response was to log an objection based on noise pollution and impact on the village and local residents. However, the Environmental Health consultation details mitigations and actions to be taken and the Parish Council agreed to remove their original objection as the concerns they raised had been addressed.
At the February meeting, the Council passed applications from Manor Farmhouse and Almeley Chase for alterations to existing structures.
PC Vacancies
There are now 2 vacancies for parish councillors. If you are interested in joining the parish council, councillors would be delighted to hear from you. Please come along to the next parish meeting and make contact with the Parish Clerk for next steps.
Next Meeting will be on Tuesday 5th March at 7.30pm.
If you have any problems that you think the Parish Council can help you with, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Parish Clerk Telephone: 07841 010791; email: clerk@gaydonparishcouncil.org.uk
Parish Village website: https://gaydonparishcouncil.org.uk
March Church Services
3rd 9.30am Holy Communion Gaydon
10am Holy Communion Northend
10th 9.30am Mothering Sunday Gaydon
17th 9.30am Agapë Service Gaydon
24th 10.30am Palm Sunday Farnborough
Joint Parish Service with Archdeacon Pastor Tim Cockell No service in Gaydon
Holy Week
Monday 7pm Compline Gaydon
Tuesday 7pm Compline Northend
Wednesday 7pm Compline Fenny Compton
Thursday 6.30pm Passover Meal Northend
Friday 6pm Good Friday Service Gaydon
Saturday 7pm Easter Vigil Burton Dassett
Easter Day
31st 9.30am Easter Communion Gaydon
Roman Catholic Church of St Francis, Kineton: Sunday Mass 11am
March Memorial Book
2001 8th John Checkley
2015 15th Bernard David Bennett
1974 16th Monica Boultbee
1988 19th Edward Lovesey
1990 25th Betty Kirby
2003 25th Betty Hill
1983 31st Leonard Thomas
If there is a special entry that you would like to see, let me know and I will try to make sure that the Book is open on that day. Julie Rickman
Village Hall News
Gaydon Village Hall Committee will meet on Monday 11 March at 8pm.
Gaydon Book Club
Our next meeting will be on Monday 4th March at 7pm when we shall be discussing The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. Please bring a pound towards the Hire of the Hall - and whatever drink and nibbles you fancy.
Anyone wishing to join us, please message me on 07917 873856 and I will add you to our WhatsApp group; or you can find us on Facebook by searching Gaydon Village Book Club. Holly
Tai Chi
The Tai Chi group meets every Wednesday evening at 7 o'clock in the Village Hall. Please text 07514 011406 so that we can look out for you. After a month, please donate a coin for the hire of the Hall.
Mobile Library
The Mobile Library will call at the Telephone Box at 2.25pm for half an hour on Friday 15 March.
Poll Clerks Wanted
Would you like to work in a polling station?
The fee for a Poll Clerk is £238 which includes an online training course and mileage. The job entails helping the Presiding Officer with the issuing of ballot papers to electors. This will consist of asking to see a voter's ID and address. You would be required to be at the station around 6.30am to help set up the polling station with other staff; you would finish work at about 10.15pm after the close of poll.
If you are interested in this job, contact Olivia Quinn, Democratic Services Officer, at Stratford Council.
email olivia.quinn@stratford-dc.gov.uk or Telephone 01789 260203
Services at St Giles's Church
Mothering Sunday - You are invited to come to church on Sunday 10 March at 9.30am to join in a service at which we remember our Mothers.
Easter Sunday - Sunday 31st is Easter Day and a service of Holy Communion will be celebrated at 9.30am by the Reverend Charmaine Host.
BMM Events in March
Jaguar Breakfast Meet Saturday 2nd
Rustival Saturday 9th
Longbridge Factory Legacies Tuesday 12th
Mini Motorists Mondays Monday 18th
Easter Event: the Fastest Cars in Britain:
Saturday 23 March - Sunday 14 April
Tucked Automotive Sunday 24th
Easter Egg Hunt Friday 29 March - Monday 1st April
Find information and tickets at www.britishmotormuseum.co.uk
Recycling Coffee Pods
Stratford District Council are launching a new service to help residents to recycle used coffee pods in partnership with Podback, a not-for-profit recycling organisation. You can recycle your plastic or aluminium coffee pods at home by signing up for free on the Podback website.
Coffee pods will be sent to specialist recycling plants where the plastic and aluminium will be transformed into new products, including drinks cans, automotive components, building products and re-usable plastic crates. The coffee grounds will be treated by anaerobic digestion to create renewable energy and soil improver.
For more information see: www.stratford.gov.uk/podback
Have Your Say on Rights of Way
The 1700 miles of Public Rights of Way across our county are important for enjoying and exploring our countryside and urban areas, as well as for travelling to work or school; and for our health and wellbeing. They are part of what makes Warwickshire a special place to live in, work in and enjoy.
If you use public rights of way, we would like to know about your experience of them and how important they are to you. If you don't use them, we would like to know why and what, if anything, we can do to help.
Take part in our online survey to tell us your ideas! Visit@ ask.warwickshire.gov.uk Survey closes 7April 2024.
The Bells
All Saints' Church Burton Dassett has its full set of bells once again. The four bells, which have now been modified, returned from John Taylor & Co. of Loughborough on 26 February to be refitted into the tower alongside the heaviest two which were modified some years ago. Refitting and other works will be carried out in time for the bells to be ready for ringing at Easter.
Christening
The baptism of Ted William Mortimer took place at our parish church of St Giles on Sunday 11 February. It was good to see such a large congregation filling the church to welcome Ted into the Church Family. We were delighted that he brought two Vicars with him and that Holy Communion was celebrated along with the christening.
Nature Notes for February
I have spent most of last month indoors with this persistent coughing virus. I have, however, been watching the bird feeders and been out a few times, so here goes! (My thanks to the Lighthorne nature group for some of these inclusions.)
It will not have escaped our attention that February, traditionally a month of frosts and ice, has been incredibly wet and mild. The high temperatures have brought about a huge growth of early plants in my own garden: a wild meadow patch of my lawn is sprouting Fritillaries, Cowslips, Primroses and Snowdrops.
The Churchyard at Chadshunt has a spectacular display as usual and plants transferred from there are flowering around our own church. They spread quite easily and so may well expand in the next few years. My flowering Lonicera (Honeysuckle) even has a few early bees; although there is a dire prediction of lower temperatures next week!
I notice that some birds are already collecting nesting materials and the dawn chorus of Blackbirds, Song Thrushes and Robins establishing territory is getting much louder. Regular birds to my feeders continue with some Goldfinches arriving a few days ago to the Niger seed feeder. I think I am feeding the entire population of House Sparrows around Gaydon - a once common species but now in fact declining in many places - but a healthy flock here in the village.
There are reports of some butterflies awakening from hibernation early. I hope they wait a bit because although there is plenty of nectar around from early flowers and Blackthorn hedges, the nights are still too cold for them. Frogs, toads and newts are certainly on the move to spawning ponds. They have to cross the roads at night, a hazard for them, so keep a look-out and assist them if it's safe to do so. I shall put out some warning signs on a route they take in the village.
Finally, I thought I would share with you a sighting in Lighthorne of a flock of Mergansers, an attractive fish-eating duck, which I have never seen around this area before; and in spite of all the building work going on around that area, they seem to have settled. Bernard Price
Flag
If you have something to celebrate or commemorate, contact Siobhan Hannan on 07780 689582, and she will raise the Flag for you in return for a £5 contribution to Church funds.
Gaydon Development - March Update: Villagers’ v. ‘satellite’ view?
If you have looked at the development notice (23/01054/OUT) on the SDC e-planning site recently, you will have spotted an updated Determination Date (05/04/24) posted up and, in the ‘Correspondence’ section, a response (at last!) from the developers to the Planning Officer’s 12-page request (5th October 2023) for extensive clarification about numerous aspects and issues raised about the development.
I was able to have a very useful conversation with the planning officer on 22 February about these two new pieces of information. First of all - no need to panic – the new ‘D-Day’ is not anywhere near being the date when a major decision will be made.
It seems that such dates are set to prompt developers that they do not have unlimited time to answer what can be very challenging questions about their plans and intentions. (Just to remind everyone: the planning officer’s letter contained 28 sections with numerous sub-sections mirroring all the concerns and arguments both residents and institutions had made about the development.)
Even if the developers CEG (Malta) Ltd and their spokespeople, Neon Planning, managed to produce a detailed response in the coming weeks, it would still have to be carefully scrutinised by SDC and the planning department which in turn would require consultation with all of us who have raised concerns. I don’t think it’s complacent to say that there can be ‘no rush to judgement’!
The 3-page response (dated 24th January) the planning office did receive from the developers was a collection of generalities which barely touched any of the multiple specific issues and objections raised by villagers and institutions alike. I cannot say that the tone was obnoxious - it was pretty dry and formal - but not once were the words: ‘village’, ‘residents/villagers’, ‘community’ or the like used. It was as though we are a ‘site’ devoid of people. Hence my sub-title at the top: Gaydon village seen as a location viewed from a satellite to be potentially measured and marked out like territory in one of the popular computer games like The Sims or - even more impersonally - a cell on a spreadsheet.
The letter also tries to take issue with future development plans for South Warwickshire, whether in the Core Strategy or the South Warwickshire Local Plan (SWLP), and suggests that they may be no longer current/relevant and have been replaced by the 2022 Housing and Economic Development Needs Assessment (HEDNA)...
Gaydon Development continued from page 6
...However, ironically, if you look-up South Warwickshire Green Belt under HEDNA, the first thing to catch your eye is the advice/instruction that commercial/industrial development should always be assessed for its possibility to take place in towns and, additionally, that flood risk, landscape blight and pollution issues must be prioritised…
Finally, one other point in the developers’ letter which I think is misleading is their attempt to suggest that there is a straightforward comparison between the JLR/AM site and GLH housing and CEG’s proposed industrial development and Gaydon residences.
They are not comparable. It’s clear that between JLR/AM and the housing in that location, the separation is greater in terms of division owing to the B.4100 and the way the JLR/AM buildings are set back from the road and houses which provides a much wider margin than would exist between Gaydon village and the closer proximity of the proposed development.
A more important difference is the contrasting topography of the two sites. JLR/AM and GLH are roughly on the same elevation so the housing is not overshadowed: whereas in contrast, it is glaringly obvious that the CEG proposed development, because of its closer proximity and elevated position at the top of the south-west slope, would tower over our village. Consequently, in the ruined landscape, the noise, the pollution, the run-off, etc. would be a far greater problem as it naturally descends, unchecked, into the village.
So, our future vision, if the development goes ahead, would be 70 feet high metal and concrete industrial silos ballooning up into the sky, broadcasting their glaring presence… Tony Hughes