West Tytherley & Frenchmoor

Our community in beautiful Hampshire

The Parish Pump

DIRECTORIES & NEWSLETTERS

Please note, not all houses receive copies of the Village Directory which lists local businesses and services but copies of the Directory are available from the Village Shop.

The Village shop

The shop AGM in the summer saw two committee members resign; Jenny Knowles and Pat Cockman. We are very sorry to have lost their support on the committee. Jenny has been associated with the shop for what seems to be forever. However, she has continued to support the shop in many ways including doing the shop accounts for which we are very thankful. The shop owes a big thank you to Jenny for what she does.
Pat has been involved for fewer years, although I am sure he thinks it is also a lifetime. Pat has been a worthy Treasurer for the last few years, a role that has now been taken over by Barry Whitlock. Many thanks to Barry for stepping into Pat’s shoes.
We are looking for some new committee members to support the shop. Nothing onerous; just a few evenings a year when the committee meet to discuss the running of the shop. You don’t need to know how to run a shop or have retailing experience but your suggestion at the meeting might make all the difference!

The shop is waiting your Christmas orders. Please see Claire.

The whole village shop team wish you all a very merry Christmas.

West Tytherley CE Primary School

This is one of the busiest and most exciting terms of the school year. As we approach Christmas the pupils have been very busy practising for the infant performance of Hosannah Rock on the 16th December and also for the Christmas Concert which is to be held in St. Peter’s Church at 6 p.m. on Thursday 10th December. We hope that many of you will join us again this year for what was a most magical evening last Christmas.
This term we have also been busy raising money for Children in Need with the School Council baking cakes for sale and dressing up in spotty clothes. The children have also been involved in a sponsored readathon to raise money for the child we sponsor in Honduras, who has no family of his own. The poppy appeal was given high profile in assembly and some of our pupils were involved in the Memorial Service on Remembrance Sunday. We collected 62 shoeboxes for the Samaritans Purse Appeal and had a very moving assembly with a visitor from the charity, who told us all about the children that receive these boxes.
Our School Christmas Bazaar on Friday 27th November, which was organised by the School PTA, was another success and once again Father Christmas took time out of his busy schedule to visit the grotto under the stage in the village hall.
Over the last few weeks in December there will be a lot of work going on in the road and school car park as Hampshire County Council re-organise the school and school house drainage system. There are going to be times when the work will seem very inconvenient, but we ask you to be patient and understanding as the outcome will be of benefit to ourselves and several local residents.
We are also currently reviewing our School Travel Plan, which looks at road safety outside of the school and through our village. Several residents will receive a letter from us inviting your views as part of the review, however, if you do not receive a letter and have an issue or incident that you feel is relevant to the safety of our community and you would like to tell us about it, please write to me at the school. We aim to keep our pupils as safe as we possibly can and child protection is high on all of our agenda’s these days. Indeed, we will all be wearing id badges in the New Year!
Finally, we are very lucky to have such a thriving village school in our midst and we take pride in the amount of volunteers that are willing to give up their time to help the children. If you have a spare hour and would like to come into school and listen to children read or perhaps help with a cookery or art activity, please let us know as we would love to have you. We would like to offer a great big thank you to everyone who supports the school and the work that we do in helping to prepare our children for the future in a world that is changing rapidly every day.

Jane Rimmington

Parish council

Since our last newsletter there have been a few changes to the Parish Council: John Guy resigned in March 2009 after almost 18 years dedicated work for the village. He was our expert on planning matters and was vigilant in protecting our heritage. He has agreed to stay on as consultant for the Rural Housing project and the West Dean Village Design Statement. We thank John for all his hard work on our behalf.
We welcome Mike Noyce onto the council who is a long time resident with a wealth of experience of the village.
We also thank Alderman Michael Woodhall, who retired as chairman of Hampshire County Council in June 2009. He has been associated with West Tytherley for 30 years and our local Hampshire County Councillor for 16 years during which he actively supported our village. Recently his projects have been the major revamp of the village drainage system;, the school extension and the proposed new sewage treatment plant for the village school.
We welcome Councillor Andrew Gibson, MBA. as our Test Valley Central County Councillor. He has been involved in local government for 25 years; has a financial background (including board member of a major public company, Eutelsat S.A., worldwide provider of television/communications satellites) and is a member of the HCC Audit Committee . He lives with his family in Chilbolton where they farm.

Planning matters

The Rural Housing project is on hold because the planning officers were rather negative on the 5 sites suggested by John Lancaster (our area “Rural Housing Enabler”). He is hoping to revisit some of the sites and we hope to have an update from him in person at the next PC meeting in the Village Hall on Monday 14th December 2009. Buckholt House. This historic house will not be demolished, but will now be refurbished and sympathetically extended. Old Methodist Chapel planning application, which the PC is supporting, has won through its first committee meeting. (one more to go). Our thanks go to Councillor Neville Whiteley for his advice and vigorous support to your PC on both these planning matters.

Highways

East Dean Road has had a major resurfacing. Our local Highways Engineer has been doing sterling work on repairing and rejigging the Dean road drains up from the Coopers Drove junction. Future plans include resurfacing from the Warren junction to North Lodge. The badly eroded verge next to Coopers Drove (opposite Pennycot) will be repaired, and protected by dragons teeth to stop parking on this verge. Highways have refused the idea of a lay-by because parking on this junction is dangerous.

“Adopt A Drain”!!

At this time of year during heavy rainfall the road drains can quickly become completely blocked by leaves. PLEASE could householders help by keeping their local drains free of leaves?

Merry Christmas from The Chairman and all your Parish Councilors.
Anthony Mavrogordato, Vice Chairman

The village newletter is published most quarters. The latest edition is here and we can email you earlier ones if you wish. Simply send your request to us here.