CODDENHAM • CREETING ST MARY • CREETING ST PETER • CROWFIELD • EARL STONHAM • GOSBECK • HEMINGSTONE • MICKFIELD • STONHAM ASPAL • STONHAM PARVA TENVILLAGENEWS FEBRUARY 2021 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE DIGITAL ISSUE 2 THE CODDENHAM PAGES NATURE NATURE NOTES A short walk during lockdown PAGE 4 COMMUNITY ST MARY’S Lighting up Christmas PAGE 7 NEWS THE CODDENHAM CENTRE Environmentally friendly PAGE 8 TEN VILLAGE NEWS FEB 2021 1 FEB 2021 CONTENTS NATURE NOTES 4 Brenda Hudson’s regular round up SPADEWORK 5 Ian Jeffrey talks foreign invaders HISTORY RECORDER 6 John Pelling’s monthly musings ST MARY’S CHURCH 7 ABOVE Christmas 2020 review Harness Maker Holbeck House c1905 BELOW RIGHT THE CODDENHAM CENTRE 8 A frosty Coddenham sunrise Latest News OVERLEAF TOP Alder Carr flooding Jan 2021 OVERLEAF BOTTOM The Bakers Shop Mr and Mrs Harfitt and THE CODDENHAM Welcome to their daughter c1958 Back Cover EDITORS the Coddenham pages of the Shrubland Milk Lorry Andrew MacPherson, Colin Hardy DESIGN Byte Design: Paul Taylor TENVILLAGENEWS PHOTOGRAPHY Coddenham History Club, The more familiar printed copy cannot be produced and distributed at the Ian Galbraith, Georgie Kerr, moment because of COVID19 Lockdown requirements. John Pelling, The Editors However, your Coddenham Parish Community website can temporarily provide a another special edition from your favorite local contributors. We have also offered to include editions from our fellow nine villages or provide links to their websites, until such time Andrea and the 10VN team can return to printing again. We have put this version together with the kind permission of Andrea Turner and Tim Thomas of Ten Village News. Thank you Thank you to all contributors. We welcome more, plus your feedback and The Editors comments through www.coddenham-parish.uk The Coddenham Pages - Ten Village News Other Ten Village News stories at stonhamaspal.co.uk Other photography © respective sources TEN VILLAGE NEWS FEB 2021 3 NATURE NATURE SPADEWORK ot long ago (19th December in Eurasia – which can mean just 2020) The Times ran a surprising about anywhere from the Steppes Narticle on ‘’gardening racism’’. A to the Himalayas. Wallflowers grow BBC presenter called James Wong well on the dry soil around here, had said that British gardening had but they seem to have originated ‘’racism baked into its DNA’’. The somewhere to the South. Stinking NATURE NOTES upshot had been a spate of death Hellebores are more promising and A short local walk during lockdown By Brenda Hudson threats which, of course, is only to are sometimes listed as ‘’natives’’, be expected these days, and can but look again and you will see that even be construed as a sign that they are attributed to mountainous you are being taken seriously. James regions in Greece, for example. So, Wong seems to have been irked by I would say that there is no way of the use of words like ‘’heritage’’ and being sure about the term ‘’native’’. ‘’native’’ – probably on Gardeners’ It is better kept with rhetoric and Question Time. He is not entirely sales talk. ‘’Heritage’’ is even more off the mark for we are wary of, for slippery and often associated with example, Spanish Bluebells that Above: First snowdrops Broomhill old-fashioned tomato varieties threaten to overpower and exclude that are prone to blight. Heritage measure. Nearby is a Viburnum, a such natives as you find in the potatoes would include Home plant linked to Ukraine and Russia, woodland on Broomhill. Nor do Guard, introduced in 1942. That but due to interbreeding at Bodnant we always take to grey squirrels, is to say, we are only entertaining (Wales) in 1935 has a new point an American import that will eat ourselves when we use such terms. of origin. Most of our roses are, it into our electric cables with bad They are very approximate, and seems from their names, French consequences. nspired by some glowing yellow Winter Above: Recent flooding James Wong would surely have but before that were at home in the Aconites on a bank near our house and Left: Acconites in Railway travellers will have tuned been aware that the majority of Middle East, as it was once called, Church Road Inews of a primrose in flower in a garden in in to Canadian Fleabane that British garden plants originated and even further away – China again. School road, I set off on the 4th of January for seeds prodigiously and is now in China – and in many points my permitted exercise without much hope everywhere, even on Coddenham East. I have a good Chimonanthus of any other botanical treats. The walk took High Street and on the allotments. (Wintersweet) now in flower, and By Ian Jeffrey me from Rectory road on the path towards Nearby you will find examples of it is usually attributed to China – Broom hill. The first treat was the sight of a Wild Salsify, said to have originated and to Japan and Korea for good few snowdrops just beginning to open in the grounds of Hemingstone Hall, visible through but at the top of the slope a Muntjac deer the beech hedge. was wandering along the hedge taking no By the time you read this there will be notice of me. Two other walkers gave me a The Coddenham Community Response Group many more. Further along the path near good wide berth as I sat on the picnic bench This group which represents nearly residents and neighbours. Please Hall Cottage was a substantial clump of before returning. I’ve just received a most all the voluntary and charitable make use of www.coddenham- Stinking Hellebore (Helleborus foetidus), sadly interesting collection of observations from bodies in Coddenham continues to parish.uk , share items on social misnamed as the flowers have no scent and a house in the Spring lane area. They had provide help and information either media, contact us confidentially or the leaves, if crushed in your hands just have a dramatic visit from a squirrel which had directly or through its community comment, encourage or raise issues a slightly rank smell. Next to this clump was a slipped down their very tall chimney into a website for the parish. We are through our ’Have Your Say’ page large tuft of similarly named Stinking Iris (Iris wood burning stove which was, fortunately, By Andrew MacPherson meeting up to twice a month to Community Feedback - on the the foetidissima). Again I could detect no smell not alight. The owners of the house were only share our current work, review any Coddenham Parish Community but a bright opened pod of orange berries able to tempt it out by using a humane rabbit local COVID issues and identify where Website. was a good splash of colour. I had not met trap and providing this B&B with some nuts we might between us, best help anyone by the time I reached the grassland and water. 4 TEN VILLAGE NEWS FEB 2021 TEN VILLAGE NEWS FEB 2021 5 HISTORY ST MARY’S ST MARY’S CHURCH ur Christmas celebrations HISTORY started with a short outdoor ...time will tell Ocarol concert played by members of the wonderful East of England Co-op band. Then later in December on Christmas Eve, and RECORDER despite heavy downpours and a chilly wind beforehand, St Mary’s By John Pelling [email protected] St Marys Church Coddenham - The Coddenham Parish Community Website (coddenham-parish.uk) ews of the first post-Brexit lorry reaching welcomed about eighty socially France via Eurotunnel recalls my first (and distanced villagers to its outdoor I think only) school journey there seventy N Christmas celebration. years ago. That was a very different experience – train early in the morning from Victoria, a Held in the churchyard, the story four-hour sea crossing from Newhaven to of the first Christmas was retold Dieppe, and another rail journey to Paris, amidst Christmas trees that had arriving in the evening – the lorry would have been set up and decorated by arrived in less time than our ferry. villagers, while the backdrop of the church was beautifully illuminated Coming from one of the poorer (now by Dave Miller and Gavin Hailes. A yuppified) areas of London, we knew more local family portrayed the characters than enough of bomb damage. It was from the Christmas story and nothing like as bad as Paris, however. If we Charlotte Fawdry led the singing of could have travelled back another thirty traditional carols. The final Advent years, to when names were inscribed on the window in Coddenham was located village war memorial, we would have seen in the church porch where the hardly any damage in Paris. Those who died church’s traditional nativity figures in the Great War, probably during their first serviceman. A happier memory of another ABOVE: The Ellis family were arranged around a manger. visit, and those who survived but no doubt American’s wartime experience here is in the at the Dukes Head Even though we could not meet suffered more than anyone could realise, had letter he wrote to Mrs. Ellen Ellis of the Duke’s inside church, the message of the seen devastation in the eastern and northern Head of which Sylvia Bickers now holds in first Christmas could still fill us with ABOVE: Just a few of the many trees in St Mary’s Churchard this Christmas provinces of France on a scale comparable the archives of the Coddenham Village ‘comfort and joy’. to earthquakes. History Club. We managed to keep them West who took second prize for the Almost all that damage here and in France Those of us who were children during WWII standing upright for the duration, creative use of natural materials.