Notes from the chair / the chair is the head of the committee and represents the Society at public events
Notes from our chair of the Society, Sam Redfern.
We're particularly excited about our new night at the beginning of February, which is being organised by Trisha shirt, our membership secretary. she has a great deal of experience in this area, having run such events for the Richmond and Twickenham Diabetes UK support group.”
Winter 2011
What a fantastic turnout by local residents at remembrance sunday this year, which was also attended by representatives from Hampton organisations, schools and churches, local councillors and Twickenham mp and Business secretary, Dr. Vince Cable. There was a strong sense of community spirit as over a hundred people followed the colourful parade of cadets, guides, scouts, horse rangers and st Johns ambulance representatives along their route from the methodist church in percy road to the war memorial by Hampton green. Under clear blue sky with the sun shining down, many wreaths were laid, including one by Michael Badgery, Chairman of The Hampton Village Traders association.
Thank you to everyone who responded with views on the proposed name of our new constituency, with 99% of you in favour. a letter has now been sent to the Boundary Commission expressing our support of the name ‘Hampton Court parliamentary Constituency’.
We have quite a few different events promoted in this newsletter so remember to make a note of them in your diaries (for those of you who receive our e-newsletters, we will of course be sending out our usual reminders!). We're particularly excited about our new night at the beginning of February, which is being organised by Trisha shirt, our membership secretary. She has a great deal of experience in this area, having run such events for the Richmond and Twickenham Diabetes UK support group.
Finally, do come and say hello to us at Hampton Village Christmas Celebrations on Sunday 4 December, where we will be promoting The Hampton Society from a table in The Railway Bell, where you will be able to enter a competition to win a bottle of laurent-perrier champagne!
Wishing you all a merry Christmas and a Happy new Year.
Sam Redfern, Chair
November 2011
Notes from our chair of the Society, Sam Redfern.
It's totally understandable that society talks will not be top of most people's 'to do' list (I, myself, have work and family commitments that prevent me from always being able to go along). However, the events I have attended have always been worth the effort”
Autumn 2011
It's been an exciting summer for Hampton with the London-Surrey Cycle Classic road race test event passing through Bushy Park in August. Then, one Sunday afternoon, I was lucky enough to catch sight of comedian David Walliams (or his arms at least!) during his marathon swim along the Thames. Standing by Garrick's Temple, soaking up the carnival atmosphere of well-wishers cheering from the banks and the boats, I was reminded how very fortunate I am to be living here.
There have been some very enjoyable Hampton Society events recently, most notably the tree identification walk at Hampton Court and a very merry evening tasting wines, courtesy of Premier Wines (great to see some new faces at these events). We're delighted to congratulate some of our older members on impressive landmark celebrations in their lives (see left). Many people regard the Hampton Society as an organisation for the over-60s. However, as a result of an age-range survey on our membership forms, we are able to confirm that our members span all ages and many of our newer members are between 30-50. Some are even 20-30 (not to mention all the children who are part of the Society)!
Unfortunately, this isn't currently reflected at all our talks and social events. It's totally understandable that society talks will not be top of most people's 'to do' list (I, myself, have work and family commitments that prevent me from always being able to go along). However, the events I have attended have always been worth the effort and the next two interesting talks coming up this autumn are firmly in my diary. It would be great to see you there, but if these don't appeal, then hopefully our quiz night in February will draw more of you out of the woodwork!
And finally, make sure you get your orders in early for our Christmas cards (see below) as they sold out very quickly last year. It might seem early to be promoting them, but I've already been informed by two of our members that they bought their Christmas cards months ago! Best wishes to you all.
Sam Redfern, Chair
September 2011
Notes from our newest chair of the Society, Sam Redfern.
This has been an exciting year for the Society with a record number of new members joining. Since last year's AGM, when we reported a decline in membership, we have made a concerted effort to raise awareness of our existence and our activities, resulting in the recruitment of 80 new members!"
Summer 2011
It is a privilege to be following on from Bill Weisblatt as Chair of the Society for 2011/12. During my 18 months on the committee, I have marvelled at the depth of Bill's knowledge of all-things-Hampton and, although I have been a Hampton resident for 14 years, I've clearly got a fair bit of catching up to do! Thankfully, Bill has agreed to stay on the committee for another year to help guide me through my first year.
The Hampton Society AGM was held on 7 April 2011 and details of the newly elected officers and committee are listed opposite. Bill reported that three members of the committee, John Beasley, John Wood and Colin Greenhalgh had resigned due to other commitments making it difficult for them to continue, and thanked them for their contributions.
We are pleased to welcome back to Hampton, and to the committee, Patrick Hooton, who joins Tony Marks in keeping an eye on planning issues. We also welcome Trisha Shirt who recently joined the committee as membership secretary, responsible for managing the list of members as well as co-ordinating the delivery of our quarterly newsletter.
Members who attended the AGM supported a modest increase in subscriptions, the first in seven years, to cover the increased cost of producing the newsletter and hiring venues for our talks and events.
This has been an exciting year for the Society with a record number of new members joining. Since last year's AGM, when we reported a decline in membership, we have made a concerted effort to raise awareness of our existence and our activities, resulting in the recruitment of 80 new members! Word of mouth has proved as effective as our printed publicity and we continue to urge members to make their local friends and neighbours aware of The Hampton Society.
Congratulations to our treasurer, William, who has made a superb job of revamping the Society's website www.thehamptonsociety.org.uk.
We are also delighted with the success of our "e-news" communications, which has enabled us to provide immediate news updates to those members with email accounts although we are currently only reaching just under half of members and would urge the rest of you to provide us with your e-mail addresses as soon as possible so we can extend this service to you all.
Sam Redfern, Chair
June 2011
These are the last notes from the outgoing chair.
Spring 2011
There is a good deal of interesting material in this Newsletter and I should like to pay tribute to my talented colleagues who are responsible for the text and illustrations, and, in particular to Maura, who takes editorial responsibility, and to William, who uses his professional skills to provide such an attractive design layout.
One of the important items in the Newsletter is the Agenda for the forthcoming Annual General Meeting on 7 April and amongst the routine items you will see that there is a resolution recommending that the annual subscription be raised from £3 and £5 to £4 and £6 for an individual member or a family resident at one address respectively. The last increase was as long ago as April 2004. We are all well aware that these are difficult times, and they may well get harder, but we hope that our members appreciate the improved quality and services that they are getting in return for their subscriptions and support. It is self-evident that we are spending more on our quarterly newsletters, which have doubled in size, are printed on better paper and profusely illustrated.
We are in the process of updating and improving our website, which is increasingly important these days, and are having to meet higher costs in venue hire, speakers' fees and more adventurous outings. Our recent drive to persuade members to pay their arrears of subscriptions has given us a temporary boost in our bank account but, as indicated above, increased costs will soon eat into our nest-egg.
I hope that you will continue to give us your support and look forward to seeing you at some of our events. With best wishes.
Bill Weisblatt, Chairman
March 2011
Bill comments on the result of the latest membership drive.
Winter 2010
As a result of an initiative from our energetic membershipsecretary, Sam Redfern, well over 100 members have, belatedly, paid their annual subscriptions within the past few weeks.
She added a personalised note to each copy of the last newsletter, reminding memberswhether their sub had been paid or not, and in many instances this had the desired effect. Our members can of course decide that they no longer wish to belong to The Hampton Society and support its activities, and that is a decision that we would accept with regret but with good grace. However, we suspect that in a majority of cases,what is involved is simple oversight or forgetfulness to which we all easily fall victim, and a reminder isenough to do the trick.
There are still a number of people who have not renewed their membership and if anyone reading these notes is in that category, I urge them to sendtheir payment to the Treasurer, William Redfern, since this enables us to continue our work of protecting the environment in Hampton, providing a programme of talks,visits and social activities and issuing four informative newsletters each year.
We have become more adventurous in finding venues for our talksand the last two events have been held at Hampton Hill Playhouse and the White House respectively, both of them proving to be popular and well-attended.
I send you best wishes for Christmas and the New Yearand look forward to seeing you at some of our events.
Bill Weisblatt, Chairman
December 2010
The main thrust of the autumn newsletter is the opening of the Hampton Academy.
Autumn 2010
We are giving prominence in this Newsletter to the new Hampton Academy, which reflects the importance of this significant change in the provision of secondary education in our community.
Primary schools throughout the Borough have attained very high standards, as shown in the national league tables, but secondary education has lagged behind and despite the best efforts of the current and previous staff Hampton Community College has a disappointing record of underachievement over the years. The proposal to replace the College with an academy, run by a Swedish-based company, met with considerable scepticism, not least on the part of The Hampton Society, and it seemed that these concerns were shared by many of the College staff and governors, as well as by local parents. Critics of the proposed scheme included leading local Conservative councillors, then in opposition, and it is a quirk of the way politics work that the major change is now being implemented by the current Conservative administration. However this came to pass, what is now important is that our young people deserve the best possible quality of education at the critical secondary stage, and we wish the new Hampton Academy every success.
John Beasley has decided that his other commitments make it impossible for him to continue as a committee member and he has accordingly resigned. He is a long- standing member of the Society and we are pleased to know that he will continue to perform his valuable function as a newsletter deliverer.
The Summer Party was once again held in the delightful surroundings of the Stockyard in Bushy Park and as well as enjoying the food and drink and good company members helped to choose the photos for this years Christmas cards, which will be on sale at our autumn events.
This is the fourth in our series of enlarged and illustrated newsletters and judging by the comments we have received the changes and improvements are appreciated by our members. It is self-evident that producing newsletters in this form involves more work and is more expensive and we repeat our previous request that
you should tell your friends and neighbours aboutThe Hampton Society, its activities and benefits, and encourage them to join.
I hope to see many of you at our talks, visits and, of course, at the Christmas Party on 3 December.
Bill Weisblatt, Chairman
September 2010
The returning new chair, Bill Weisblatt, thanks the previous Chair for his contributions to the Society.
Summer 2010
The annual general meeting of the Society was held on 15 April 2010 and details of the newly elected officers and committee are listed opposite. At the meeting warm tributes were paid to officers and committee members who were retiring after giving enormously valuable service to the Society and the community over a number of years.
Ray Alen had brought wisdom and common sense to our deliberations and had, with reluctance,taken on the role of Chairman at a time of transition for the Society. Jean Alen had not merely carried out the challenging duties of Secretary, but had prepared our two sell-out books of reminiscences, organised a series of photographic exhibitions, re-vamped the newsletter layout, set up the website and generally, brought an unprecedented degree of technological skill to our work. Colin Sinnott was an exemplaryTreasurer,performing his arcane labours with accuracy and unfailing patience. Bryan Alderson, the longest serving of those who have retired, has simply been a tower of strength (literally so when it came to moving tables and chairs at meetings) for many years.We shall miss them all and hope to keep in touch with them.
We have started allotting tasks to the committee members and the process will continue. Alice Fordham,Rosemary Hill and MauraWaters will arrange visits and talks. Sam Redfern and John Wood are looking after membership, Maura Waters has taken over as newsletter editor,with support from William Redfern, and Tony Marks will keep an eye on planning issues, where he will co-operate with our friends at Hampton Hill Association.
We were given clear guidance at the AGM that we should maintain an effective dialogue with our neighbours in Hampton Hill and we shall of course do so. I have already had talks with Mike Walker, HHA Chairman, and we shall continue to consider how and to what extent we can share our activities.
When appropriate we shall also see whether it is feasible to make use of the excellent facilities at the White House.
Another important issue that was helpfully raised at the AGM was the size of our membership, which has declined in recent years and is smaller than could reasonably be expected for a community like Hampton. We shall do what wecan to improve our publicity and make clear the attractions of joining and supporting the Society.We hope our members will do their best to bring our existence and activities to the notice of their friends and neighbours.
As well as losing a number of committee colleagues this year, we have also had to replace some long-standing newsletter deliverers who have retired after a long period of valuable service. We are grateful to them for helping us to keep in touch with our members. We very much appreciate the offers of help we have had with the job of delivering the newsletters and will take up these welcome offers in due course.
As well as having new committee members and new deliverers we have also taken note of the fact that political control of the Council (as well as the Government) has changed.We are of course non-party-political although many of our activities inevitably have a political element – planning, transport, traffic, Heathrow and so forth. We shall as always be glad to work with the Council and with our local Councillors, of whatever persuasion, but shall not hesitate to oppose them when it is in the best interests of the residents of Hampton to do so.
I send best wishes for the summer to all our members and look forward to seeing you at our events.
Bill Weisblatt, Chairman
June 2010
