Stoke Orchard and Tredington Newsletter May 2020 A Monthly Message If ever there is a time to ple who were helping to see faith in action, this is take care of others and it! Faith is not something were busy rebuilding and we have on Sundays in restoring, said: "There. church; faith is something There is God." we have seven days a week, Times like these make it 24 hours a day. Faith is clear that we are all affect- what inspires our thoughts ed in different ways. And and actions. And there are no-one has all the answers so many community initia- individually, but together tives and actions in place we can bring a huge at present, which is truly amount of care and ideas something to give thanks to help each other through. for! It seems that in all Thank you all for every- places communities are thing you are doing. Signs coming together to take of hope and faith in action. care of each other, and es- Peace and blessings to you pecially of those who are all, Ilse' the most vulnerable. It makes me think of some- thing I read a while ago about the aftermath of a disaster. Looking at the devastation, people asked each other: "Where was God?" And someone else, pointing towards the peo- Tredington Flower Festival 2007— St Georges Day April 23rd. IMPORTANT Parish Council News April 2020. [email protected]. Parish Council Meetings In Covid-19 Times In accordance with the latest instructions from the Government, ad- vice from the National Association of Local Councils (NALC), the So- ciety of Local Council Clerks (SLCC) and Gloucestershire Association of Parish and Town Councils (GAPTC), the decision to suspend Stoke Orchard and Tredington Parish Council meetings until fur- ther notice has been taken. This also includes the Annual Parish Meeting. This proposed action by the Parish Council, has been further prompted by the decision of Tewkesbury Borough Council to post- pone all Council meetings at this time. TBC Planning Department is to extend deliberation time on Applications to ensure adequate time for comments and observations from Consultees and members of the public to be received. The work of the Parish Council will continue as we have set up a process of delegated decision making and electronic distribution of information. Planning consultations are also still being considered and details will be added to the website when available, thus giving members of the public the opportunity to contribute via email or mail to the Parish Clerk. As soon as Parish Council Meetings re- sume, details will be displayed on the website, on noticeboards, and on social media The website: stokeorchardandtredington.org.uk is being kept up-to -date with useful information so do check, particularly the ‘Latest News’ page. You can still contact the Parish Clerk, Jules Owen by email: [email protected] Please think of others at this time - Help your Neighbours and Keep Safe. The Orchard Store and Amy’s Coffee Shop Thank you so much for all your support over the last few weeks with purchasing your groceries from us but also adhering to the distancing rules and no more than 2 customers in the shop! A huge thank you to our fantastic team of staff for their dedication and hard work! To ensure the health and safety of our shop staff and yourselves our wonderful volunteers have in- stalled a screen in front of the till We are also pleased to an- nounce we have children’s comics and more maga- zines to chose from! Plants and produce now in stock. Stoke Orchard Community Centre We are looking forward to seeing you all once the lockdown is lifted. When that time comes we will announce it on social media as well as in the newsletter. Until then, please stay safe and well. The Orchard Store and Amy’s Coffee Shop STOP PRESS Shop Daily Takings Exceed £1000 This week, on one day, The Orchard Stores took over £1000. We want to celebrate with you as this is a mile- stone in the history of our “Local Store” and marks the way that you, our Community, supports us. Thank you for shopping locally and for making all the extra work that we, and our staff have undertaken, so worthwhile. The 1990/91 Village Appraisal, undertaken to measure the needs, wishes and opinions of those living in the Par- ish, voted A Village Shop as the most important addition needed, 30 years later it is part of our everyday life. The Responsibility for running the shop came about as planning condition to replace the Old Coal Board site with The Orchard Estate Thank you to all those who give so much time to make it happen …….. and thank you for shopping with us! At times like these we all need to support each other to cope with the changes to our lifestyles that we will have to make in order to delay the spread of Covid 19. This Glouces- tershire Community Help Hub is a collaboration of all the lo- cal Councils, Police and Health Services. Access all useful information……...how you can get help - offer help …… how your business can help - how you can get help for a neighbour. https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/gloucestershires- community-help-hub/com STOP PRESS. We have just heard that the Commu- nity Centre will receive the Standard Business Grant which will reduce deficits and enable the important Community Shop support to contin- ue during lockdown. Richard’s Ramblings - May 2020 Communication. I received a phone call two weeks ago asking me to check that all the members of an association I belong to were in good health. I started b with the oldesr first. One gentleman, living alone, had not spoken to anyone all day and he was grateful for the chance to speak. In the end, I spent three days putting in place a “telephone grapevine” cascading down from myself to 5 group leaders who in turn had between 5 and 6 in their group. It is a contact system that we used in Round Table before the days of the internet and the email. So I started to think where and how did this personal communi- cation thing start. In the early days things were written on tab- lets of stone and on Parchment scrolls. Naturally we had the Town Crier, and local newspapers. In Tewkesbury we had our own Tewkesbury Register, which later was incorporated in the Evesham Journal, and the Gloucestershire Echo. However, things were to change and In October 1877, Alexander Graham Bell had made his first telephone call to his assistant Watson in the next room. 18 months later Dr Bond, the Medical Officer for Gloucester, a keen fol- lower of all matters scientific, gave a talk on October 27th at the Gloucester School of Art and Science using the telephone as the answer to the “Problems of Communication between Rooms in a Large House!!” Had those present taken up the innovation, Gloucester would have had the first telephone system and exchange in the world. The original system of communication by wires was the Telephone telegraph system and Bells telephone was initially tested on telegraph wires. Probably the reason we called them telegraph poles. This system used a series of coded bells by the railways to advise of danger or an approaching train. Apparently the Gloucester Wagon Works were im- pressed with the Telephone and installed systems in their factory between departments but it wasn’t un- til June 1887 that Gloucester finally had its own ex- change with 16 companies having their own line, each individually connected by its own wire to the exchange in Berkeley Street. A month later, a line was installed to Bristol and the expansion of the Post Office Telephone system began in earnest between big cities. Of course at that time, the exchanges were all manually run with an operator seated in front of a myriad of sockets into which she would connect the caller. The old stories of those times of the Operator knowing everyone’s business were probably very true as the caller had to ask to be connected man- ually The operator knew therefore who was talking to whom and often what about! (I say Doris- do you know??” Looking back to local publications from 1912 and the adverts in them, we see that Haywards of Tewkesbury were number 39 on the Tewkesbury Exchange and number 7 at Upton Upon Severn. Interestingly enough, Tysoe’s the Grocers in Bar- ton Street were 38 and Tewkesbury Garage 20. However, many stores still relied on the written word and when, in 1912, the Post Box in Cotteswold Road, Tewkesbury had 8 daily collections from 12.30am to 8.30pm and 5 parcel deliveries in town - with many letters delivered the same day - who needed this new fangled telephone machine - an intrusion into daily life? It soon became apparent that we did need the “phone” Exchanges started to appear in all sorts of villages. There is one at the bottom of the hill at Coombe Hill. Our grandparents at Uckington were Coombe Hill 232. Bishops Cleeve Exchange was just off Gotherington Lane. These small local operator controlled units were gradually replaced by automatic dialling equipment and when full electronic tone dialling came in, many local exchanges were amalgamated by adding extra numbers, 680 to Coombe Hill and 67 to Bishops Cleeve when they joined the Cheltenham exchange. 29 was added to all local Tewkesbury 4 digit numbers (which also incorporates Malvern which start with 5 and Bredon which start with 77) and 780 to Tirley numbers when they joined the Gloucester Exchange.