Lots of visitors to annual exhibition again.
As in the past, this local history event attracted people from far away as well as from the village and nearby, providing lots of opportunities for memories to be shared and for new information to be discovered about life in the parish over many decades.
About 20 more photographs were scanned into the project’s archives (many of farm life and hop-picking in Weston) and two large vellum documents from around 1790 relating to Nursted were received and will be deposited, with others, at the County Records Office in Winchester.
There were also some Parish Council Minutes from 1949 showing that some matters discussed over 75 years ago are still topical today: repairs to the village hall, grass-cutting on the Recreation Ground and the local bus service. Other items show some of the progress that has been made since those post-war years: there were proposals for a sewerage scheme for the village and for electrical wiring in the village hall.
Some visitors to the event met old school friends who they had not seen since 1963 but perhaps the highlight of the day was a leather wallet, left behind at the Five Bells when the group of Canadian Soldiers left the village to cross to Normandy after D-Day. The soldiers had promised that they would return to collect it after the war was over; but never did. Their fate in France is not known and it had been hoped that the wallet might give some clues about their names, their Unit or their Regiment. But unfortunately the wallet was completely empty meaning that the hunt to find out more about these brave men must continue.
