Copy for the next edition should be given to Mr. George Adams at "Karibu", Main Street, tel: 680286 by midnight on Monday, 26^thSeptemberplease.

If you normally prepare your material using a computer, it would make my life easier ifyou could submit your offering in electronic form, though paper is, of course, fine. My ‘official’ e-mail address is: news-editor @ oxhill.org.uk if you wish to send me stuff that way.

This edition was edited by George Adams.

September 3

Is the Feast Day of Saints Simeon Stylites the Younger, Phoebe, Remaclus, Aigulf or Ayoul of Lerins (wherever that is), Gregory the Great, Cuthburga, Hildelitha, and Macanisius.

It was the day when, in 1650, Oliver Cromwell defeated the Scots at the second Battle of Dunbar and, in 1651, he defeated the Royalist troops at the second Battle of Worcester. Went in for second attempts, did our Noll. In 1783 Britain recognized US independence with the signing of a treaty in Paris and in 1916 the first Zeppelin was shot down over England. In 1935 Malcolm Campbell reached a new world land speed record of 301.13 mph inBluebirdon Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, and in 1939 Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and France declared war on Germany. The Americans, of course, kept well out of it. Again. In 1967 Sweden changed from driving on the left to the right though not, as the Irish are reported to be thinking of, with lorries changing one day and the cars the next so as to phase it in gradually. In 1976 the US spacecraftViking 2landed on Mars and began sending pictures of the Red Planet to earth. Edgar Rice Burroughs had written his account of the place many years earlier.

Joseph Wright, that well-known British painter, was born in 1734 and Louis Henry Sullivan, the equally noted US architect, in 1856. For the silver screen buffs Alan Ladd, the diminutive star, was born in 1913 and Brian Lochore, who was apparently a rugby player of note, in 1940.

Oliver Cromwell (him again) died this day in 1658, so beating the Scots and Royalists didn't do him much good for long. E. E. Cummings, with three capital letters in his name at least, even if not in his poems, in 1962. Ho Chi Minh, he of the trail, died in 1969, Frank Capra in 1991 and David Brown in 1993. Of course there have been lots of David Browns but this one, you understand, was THE David Brown.

Editor

October Issue

Please could I have all copy for the next issue by midnight on Monday, 26th September?

If you normally prepare your material using a computer, it would make my life easier if you could submit your offering in electronic form, though paper is, of course, fine.

If you do use electronic form, the best format is a Word file with the page size set to A5 and Margins of 1.5cm all round. The font size should in general be 10 point.

My ‘official’ e-mail address isnews-editor @ oxhill.org.ukif you wish to send me stuff that way.

George Adams - 680286

Cover Picture

The Trevi Fountain in Rome. Picture provided by Angela Emmerson.

Edito

Thank you

After a fair amount of thought I have decided to stand down as vicar this Autumn. My last service will be a united service in St. Mary’s, Tysoe on Sunday, October 2nd at 10.45. I would like to take this opportunity to thank many, many people in Tysoe, Oxhill and Whatcote for their friendship and support over the last eleven years. I’ve enjoyed being vicar here enormously and will take away with me many very happy memories.

After October 2nd the three churches will be run by the Parochial Church Councils under the chairmanship of the churchwardens. Contact names and numbers for all church enquiries will be in the next edition.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to making the most of my last few weeks as vicar and hope to see as many of you as possible before I leave.

David Knight

JILL TUCKER

I am delighted to announce that Jill Tucker has been invited by the bishop to train for ordination to the priesthood. Jill has been offered a place at Queen's College, University of Birmingham from the beginning of September. She has also been given the special privilege of combining two years of study into one! She may want to question whether or not this is a privilege when she is snowed under with essays.

To the best of my knowledge this is the first time that the village has produced a vocation to priesthood and is a great event. The downside is that Jill will be almost entirely absent from the parish for the next year. Please remember Jill and her family in your thoughts and prayers. She will be ordained deacon in the cathedral next July and priested in 2007.

David Knight

[In my ignorance, I had never met the verb 'to priest' before, so I rushed to my dictionary. David is, naturally, quite right. It is a verb (as well as a club for bashing things over the head)! Never say the News is not educational. Ed.]

Deanery Quiet Morning

Saturday 24th September 2005

Everyone who lives in our parishes is welcome to come along to Whatcote Church and take time out of their busy lives for a time of quiet and reflection led by Mrs Margaret Sweet, who is a Reader and Mothers Union co-ordinator for prayer and spirituality.

There will be coffee at 9.15 a.m. for a 9.30 start. The morning will finish at 12 noon with a light lunch for those who wish to stay.

If you would like further details please contact

Elisabeth Ashworth (Deanery Lay Chair) 01608 686391.

This site is maintained by villagers of Oxhill for the benefit of the community and those interested in the history, news and activities that make the village such a pleasant place to live.

Send mail to the editor of the Oxhill News at news-editor @ oxhill.org.uk.

©2005 Oxhill Village (Terms and Conditions of use)

Last modified:September 05, 2005

Church Service Times

St. Lawrence Oxhill

Sunday September 4th - 9:30 - Open Air Service on Bill' Hill, by kind permission of Bill and June Fox

Sunday September 11th - 9:30 - Holy Communion.

Sunday September 18th - 6:30 - Evensong.

Sunday September 25th - 9:30 - Harvest Festival with Auction of Produce. This will be David's last service in Oxhill.

Sunday October 2nd - 10:45 - United Benefice Service for Harvest in Tysoe. This will be David's last service in the Benefice.

Mid-week Service - 7.30pm Thursday evenings

An informal service lasting no more than 30 minutes.

This will resume at 7:30 on Thursday, 8th September.

Harvest Supper

The HARVEST SUPPER will be held on Saturday, October 1st at 7.30 p.m. in Oxhill Village Hall.

Tickets are £5 each, and are available from Lilian Welsby, 680268, or Janet Gardner, 680280.

Jill Tucker

Barbeque Cancellation

The Barbeque which was to have happened on September 10th at The Old House will not now take place.

This is because I will be on a course that day.

Jill Tucker

P.C.C. Meeting

There will be a meeting of Oxhill P.C.C. on Thursday, September 22nd at 8.00 p.m. at Oxbourne House, the home of Graeme and Posy MacDonald.

Jill Tucker

It's a Small World

While on a bowling tour in Cornwall we played against Wadebridge on August 13th.

Who should we meet but Vic and Jane Walters, who used to live in Oxhill, opposite the Peacock.

They were very well and enjoy their bowls, and send their regards to all who read this.

Joan & Gerald Butcher

Kineton Greenacres Oil Consortium

Central heating oil will be ordered again in September.

Please phone your requirements on Saturday September 10th or Sunday September 11th, no later than 6 p.m., to 01295 680529.

Oil prices are very high at the moment but the consortium will do its best.

Di Harper

For Sale

Modern night storage heater, approximately 42 inches wide.

£20.

Myrtle Knight, 680555

Congratulations

Many, many congratulations to Heather and James on the birth of Leila Jessica Osborne, born on 12th July 2005 at 6.39 a.m., weighing in at 7lb 14 ½ oz.

Jill Tucker

Pot Competition

It is with regret that I report the cancellation of this annual village competition due to lack of support. Clearly everyone was exhausted after the excellent scarecrow weekend.

The committee +1 were the only entries!

A pity when I see some beautiful, flowering and colourful containers when I walk around. Maybe better luck next time – if there is a next time.

Myrtle Knight

Nature Watch

The month of harvest, hops and apples.

The month for gathering and storing, which brings me to this curious incident. While recently attending to my father-in-law’s grave, which is still “settling” I was surprised to find, neatly covered over with grass and pushed into a small scrape, a duck egg. Anne Marshall had recently reported to me that she had been losing quite a lot of eggs from one of her laying ducks, so I knew where it had come from and I knew the culprit – the fox. Foxes are very partial to eggs and will often take them when they find a ready supply. They will store the surplus creating “larders” for times when food may not be so plentiful. Some years ago when we kept chickens I once found a store of some 14 eggs buried beneath a plum tree and not one was broken.

Around the same time I had a large pen at the top of the garden with nine French partridge in, and one morning when I went to feed them I found a fox had dug its way under the wire and there were the scant remains of what I judges to be two of the partridge, but no sign of the others. Then I noticed a slight mound in the grass and when I carefully pulled the turf back I saw that it was a partridge neatly arranged and buried in a scrape. Further inspection revealed the other six birds buried in exactly the same way and all in good condition, so I decided to pluck a couple to see how they were killed. It was apparent that the fox had quickly dispatched each bird by a rapid nip and flick to the back of the neck, leaving a small bruise. Having had a good meal of two, the other seven were carefully buried for future consumption. I often wonder how long they would have remained there – on reflection perhaps I should have left them, waited and watched!

In the warm evenings Jane and I have sat in the garden watching a flock of swifts flying and screaming in ever heightening pattern until we could hardly see them, but could still hear them. To countrymen the swift was once known as the “Devil bird” or “Devil’s screecher” because of its habit of flying screaming round houses, and if seen round churches it was believed the birds were the lost souls, bemoaning their missed opportunities for redemption. The name swift, like the adjective, comes from the Old English swifan, meaning moving fast.

The swift is not related to the swallow or house martin despite their superficially similar appearance. Swifts belong to their own family Apodidae and their closest relatives are the tropical humming birds. Apodidae actually means “no feet” and while the swift does have feet, they are very short and weak and if they do accidentally land on the ground they become helpless and can easily be caught, but on the wing they are masters of stunning flight. They feed on the wing, mate on the wing (they appear to mate for life) and even sleep on the wing – probably cat-napping on currents of rising air between short spells of flapping to gain height. Swifts visit us for a very short time, arriving in May and leaving towards the end of August. As you read this, those swifts we saw over Oxhill will be well on their way back to Africa. Here are a few lines from Ted Hughes’ poem Devil Screamers:

And here they are, here they are again
Erupting across yard stones
Shrapnel-scatter terror. Frog-gapers
Speedway gogglers, international mobsters

A bolas of three of four wire screams
Jockeying across each other
On their switchback wheel of death
They swat past, hard fletched,
Veer on the hard air, toss up over the roof,
And are gone again.

Grenville Moore

Talgarth Choir

The TALGARTH CHOIR are once again coming to Oxhill to give a concert in the Church, on Saturday, 15th October at 7.30 p.m.

Tickets are £8 each, which includes a supper, and are available from Lilian Welsby, 680268, or Janet Gardner, 680280.

Jill Tucker

Scarecrow Weekend Booklet

I hope that everyone who ordered a booklet or a VCD has now had them, and that they received the correct number of copies.

The print run (which in the end stretched to fifty copies of the booklet) has now been sold out. Perhaps copies will become collector's items, selling for vast sums on Ebay. Then again, possibly not.

I would like to thank all those customers who paid me their £3 per copy so promptly. Unfortunately there are still one or two outstanding, but naturally my lips are sealed as regard to names.

George Adams

Our Town

Mike Collins, working as our Webmaster, has been having an email correspondence with Lisa Gmys in America. We thought you might like to read it. Photos of fair and town to follow as and when.

I have done a Google search on Oxhill and USA, but Lisa's town doesn't seem to be mentioned, at least not on the hundred or so pages I read through. There are about 800 references to Oxhill, most of them either connected with old Oxhill inhabitants who emigrated to the U.S.A. or adverts for B&Bs. The only other Oxhill with a significant internet presence seems to be the village in Durham, now, from the map, taken in by its neighbours. Ed.

Hello,

I'm not sure who I'm speaking to but our little town in Home, Pennsylvania, USA, is called OxHill. We have a fair every year after our Labor Day Holiday and it is a simple country fair. We are a town of farmers and laborers and we never even knew that there was another place in the world called Oxhill. I'm proud of sharing such a name with England. If you would like to see pictures of our little fair and town I can send some to you. I find this very interesting.

Sincerely, Mrs. Gmys

Hello Mrs. Gmys,

I hope you have enjoyed finding our web site about the village of Oxhill in the UK. If you have looked through the history section then I expect that you will have found that our community has a long history and often America settlements are named after a home town in the UK.

Oxhill in the UK is also a small community of approx 120 home surrounded by farms and was a community of farmers and labourers. Increasingly though villagers now commute to surrounding larger towns and to cities such a Birmingham and even London.

If you would like to select some pictures of your town then I will pass them and your e-mail onto the editor of our village newsletter who I'm sure would be interested to use them in the future.

Best Regards,

Mike Collins

Hello Mike Collins,

Yes, I enjoyed your web site about your village! I'm in the process of taking pictures to send. In 2 weeks we will be having our Fair and I will email all photos after that!

Sorry for not writing sooner but around here we're trying to get everything finished before we have snowfall.

Thanks again, Lisa Gmys

Tysoe Marionette Group

Stage lighting is one of the main aspects of theatre craft. It is said that lighting designers paint with light much as an artist uses brushes. Clever lighting can bring scenes to life, create atmosphere, work magic, as well as enable audiences to see the performers, whether they be human actors or wooden dolls. Our marionette theatre has nearly 50 luminaires (spotlights, flood lights and colour battens) located around the stage and auditorium. These are controlled by 27 dimmable control circuits. This is a formidable array to manage as presently all are controlled manually using a combination of old-fashioned rheostats (our oldest has seen its 80^thbirthday!), varivolt transformers and modern electronic dimmers with linking switches. Now, our longer marionette plays typically call for up to 100 lighting cues (a lighting cue is change in light settings demanded by the script or the play director). Some idea of the enormity of the task becomes apparent and our “Mr Sparks” needs to combine the memory of an elephant with the dexterity of an octopus! “Ah”, but you say “the Royal Shakespeare Theatre has 10 times as many luminaries”. This is so, but they have the advantage of a computer-based system to match their demanding needs. We don’t! But we are working on it. Meanwhile purists say that doing things manually is much more fun!

Our dramatisation of Paul Gallico’s

“LOVE OF SEVEN DOLLS”

is scheduled for

Friday 11th & Saturday 12th November

and

Friday 25th & Saturday 26th November

at 7:30pm.

Please contact:

Jon and Ann Beeny on Tysoe 680431, or

Email: JonandAnn@annbeeny.f9.co.uk

Free Electric Blanket Testing

Warwickshire County Council's Trading Standards Service is offering electric blanket testing free of charge to Warwickshire Over 60s. Electric blanket tests will take place at several venues in October.

Monday 10th October - Stratford Fire Station
Tuesday 11th October - Leamington Library
Wednesday 12th October - Shire Hall, Warwick
Friday 14th October - Shipston Fire Station
Monday 17th October - Rugby Library

To book an appointment call freephone 0800 413332.

Tests will be conducted by appointment only and bookings will be taken on a first come first served basis. The number of appointments is limited so book early to avoid disappointment.

The free phone number will be staffed between 9.00 and 5.00 Monday to Friday and an answerphone will operate at all other times.

In past years we have found faults on up to 75% of all the blankets we have checked. Unsafe electric blankets are the cause of many house fires each year, and can often lead to death or serious injury. Elderly people are particularly at risk, making up a large percentage of reported deaths. We are determined to rid Warwickshire of dangerous and unsafe electrical blankets and we urge you to take up this opportunity.

Warwickshire Trading Standards Service

Exhibitions at Compton Verney

16 September–30 October:Luc Tuymans: The Go-Between

23 September-30 October:Susan Hiller: The J-Street Project

There is also a wide range of one-day events and courses.

For full details please contact Emily Wyle on 01926 645500.

W I Report - July 2005

The WI Summer Bring and Share Garden Party was held at “Stonehouse” in Baldwins Lane, Upper Tysoe, in the President’s garden, where tables and chairs were set out between illustrated signs indicating the whereabouts of interesting features.

Members kindly brought along plates of delicious savouries and sweets, which were much appreciated. Folks assembled at 6.30 and were greeted with a drink and the first quiz entitled “Warwickshire Names”. Ann Evans syndicate(!) won what was widely agreed to be a tough one! Another equally difficult quiz - “International Objects”, comprising 20 souvenirs from far away places including Outer Mongolia, Africa and Trinidad, were displayed and members invited to guess their uses and origins. Christine Chapman won this one. Non-academics had a go at the clock golf on a course with several handicaps! It was noticed that the goldfish were still intact after the visit and that the Bob Flowerdew facility remained mercifully unused!

After supper members took their seats in the Barn Theatre for a short extract taken from the Tysoe Marionette Group’s forthcoming production of Paul Gallico’s “Love of Seven Dolls”. June Wreford thanked Ann and Jon Beeny for their hospitality.

Many thanks to all who loaned tables, assisted with setting up and washing up.

The next monthly meeting on 7th September will be “The History of Bronnley Soap Making and Much More” by Mr J. Sheppard.

Jackie Batchelor

More results from Google

Do any of the members of the Garden Club grow Saxifraga 'Oxhill', and if not, why not? If you don't and would like to, you can obtain the cultivar from Dowker, B. & Walkey, David. Just search the Internet for "Saxifraga 'Oxhill'".

If you become bored by it you could also try Saxifraga 'Tysoe' and Saxifraga 'Whatcote' by way of variety. Yes, I know it's a rotten pun. If you wish to move further afield you could try growing Brailes and Wellesbourne. Indeed, pretty well anywhere in the area is possible.

Editor

Stop Press

Alan Hedley and Sue Duckworth had their caravan stolen from their drive last week. It behoves all of us to be vigilant at all times.

Editor