2 SUMMER I S SUE | J ULY 2 0 2 3 Shapwick Parish Council Shapwick Starlets WI SUE SELLICK GRAHAM CROUCHER CHAIR OF SHAPWICK PC Village Green Update: Given that the acquisition of the Village Green has been twenty-plus years in the making, we should not really be surprised that, as this issue of Shapwick News goes to the printers the purchase of the Green is still “work in progress”, with the legal teams preparing the contracts and completing the required searches. The main reason for the delay is the fact that the names on the Land Registry still included a person who died several years ago. Clearly this needs to be corrected before completion can take place. Meanwhile thanks to everyone who supported the Village Hall and Pavilion Consultation events. We ended up with many valuable contributions to the various surveys created for the events. We will be using these findings to create a “master plan” which will then be shared with the community for final comment. We have also had a very useful meeting with the planning team at Somerset Council who have offered help and guidance from their various experts to help us shape the “master plan”. The Annual Parish Meeting and the Parish Council AGM were held in June. Reports either written or verbal were provided to the meeting by:- St Mary’s Church, Shapwick Community Land Trust, Shapwick History Group, Shapwick Runners, Dovecote School and Shapwick Pavilion and Playing Field. Copies of the reports will be posted to the Parish Council website shapwickparishcouncil.org.uk. For its part the Parish Council felt that, in addition to dealing with various planning issues and the Village Green purchase during the past 12 months, it had made good progress in the area of communication through a presence on Facebook and the excellent support of the Shapwick News “delivery team” who enabled the PC and others to distribute important messages alongside Shapwick News itself. Further progress had been made on some of the recurring themes i.e. dog fouling and “ditches and drains” (see report in the April 2023 issue of Shapwick News). In the Parish Council Meeting that followed the Village Meeting Graham Croucher and Lesley Gaskell were re-elected as Chair and Vice Chair respectively. All Agendas and Minutes are available at: shapwickparishcouncil.org.uk For our June meeting, our speaker was Rob Jones, a former Homicide Detective with Avon and Somerset police, who has researched his ancestors who came from Shapwick. The names he had researched were Roley, Vearing, Diamond and Warry. It all started when he found some ledgers in a blanket box when his Aunt died. The ledgers belonged to George Roley who was a mason in the village. All most interesting, and Rob will be invited back again to talk about his life in the police force. We have lots of lovely new members, in fact may shortly have to start a waiting list, which is amazing as only a few years ago the group was down to 10 members and on the point of folding! The Coronation picnic was a lovely event, with so many cakes generously donated. It was a great afternoon. I think the WI Tug of War team was a force to be reckoned with... (see p. 4!) We finished off with a photo session with the ‘Royal Couple’ in Tracey’s field – thank you Tracey. The FabDrumming session really was Fab too! Marion bought along about 40 instruments including 20 Djembe drums and it was so much fun. In fact we now want to start our own Drumming group! Some of our members helped out again at the Bath and West in June (see left!) and we will be at the Taunton Flower Show again later on in the summer. In July we will be doing some gentle pilates with Julie, who runs classes in the village. Then we will have our Summer break. But we have lots of August Adventures planned. Last year we visited Hestercombe Gardens, and had factory tours courtesy of Owen Barry and Drapers. This year we are hoping to visit the Somerset Brick and Tile Museum, the History Hut, Glenda Spooner Farm and the Spirit of Glastonbury. Follow Shapwick Starlets WI on Facebook. We meet the second Tuesday of each month apart from August, at 7.30pm in the Village Hall.
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