Marton Village, Warwickshire

Local History Group April Meeting

Written by Andy Bolam

The theme for this month was the gravestones in Marton’s churchyard and the group was fortunate to choose the only dry evening in April to pay a visit to this source of local history. For further information on this topic click here.

Other items covered at the meeting:

1. Next meeting 28th May: walk around Southam’s historic sites. Further details nearer the time. Please let David Fry know if you plan to attend and have not already notified him.

2. Birdingbury Local History Group open day Saturday 5th May, 10am-4pm in “The Club”

3. The Willoughby Society have a heritage day on 16th June

4. Gravestone project: Ways to present the gravestone plans and information will be discussed at the AGM in June. (What should we do with the recorded information about gravestones that has been digitised and organised by Angie? How can we make it easier for individual graves to be identified?)

Some real progress at last for the Museum

Written by Bobbie Bolam

After lengthy discussions and further meetings with the consultants (funded by the grant from Cemex), the Museum Volunteers have drawn up some firm plans for the future of the Museum on which the application for the Heritage Lottery Fund grant will be based.

Read more: Some real progress at last for the Museum

BT Infinity photo shoot

Written by Michael Koch

The photoshoot to announce the arrival of Infinity in the Marton Exchange is going to be

on Monday 19 March 2012, at 5pm

at Hilltop Farm
Hunningham Hill
Fosse Way
CV33 9EL

hilltopfarmshop.com/where-we-are

Obviously the more people who can attend the better the pictures will look!  If you could spare some time to attend it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your help - and hope to see you there.

(message passed on by Cordelia)

Museum update March 2012

Written by Bobbie Bolam

Following last month’s excellent news about the funding from Cemex to the tune of £4000 the show is now on the road!  A meeting has been held with a heritage consultant, together with Glynis Powell from Warwickshire Museums, and a plan drawn up as to how we want to be able to run the Museum in future.  A meeting with an architect has also taken place to discuss our needs in terms of building alterations and design which has proved useful and enabled us to crystallise our thoughts and ideas.  Inevitably, projected costs are a little higher than we had hoped for (aren’t they always?).  A meeting of volunteers and Trustees is planned for 10^th March when we hope to be taking some firm decisions on the way forward and starting work on our Heritage Lottery grant application. Wheels grind very slowly, unfortunately, but we do at last seem to be making some progress.  This site will be updated again just as soon as we have more news so keep watching!

New Arrivals !

Written by Sam Woodfield

It’s that time again – Saturday 10th December saw the arrival of the latest batch of Marton Pigs to their new home.

After much work to tidy up the pig field and a fancy new water trough, this round sees the arrival of 16 new pigs – 15 Oxford Sandy Blacks and a freebie Kunekune thrown in by the breeder.

Read more: New Arrivals !

CEMEX COMES UP TRUMPS FOR THE MUSEUM

Written by Bobbie Bolam

Marton Museum volunteers are delighted to announce that Cemex have agreed to fund the design stage of our project to carry out remedial work on the Museum building up to an amount of £4000 which includes about £3000 for the outline design brief and up to £1000 for the services of Warwick County Council Museums’ facilitator who will offer liaison advice and support to help us look into what it is exactly that we need to be doing. This will help inform the decisions being made by the design team and eventually enable us to apply for a Lottery Heritage Grant.  We are unable to make the application until we are able to specify precisely how we intend to spend the money, and we can’t do this without professional advice!  The Museum volunteers are currently holding meetings to discuss the first steps in this process.  Classification work has stopped for the time being due to the inhospitable conditions in the Museum during the winter months.  We have recently printed off the humidity and temperature readings for 2011 which do not make happy reading!

Infinity campaigners meet BT and Openreach

Written by Michael Koch

Last Friday the local campaign team for Marton Exchange met with BT and Openreach representatives who gave us an update on the rollout of superfast broadband (SFBB) to the Marton Exchange.

Just like last time, I've also taken a video interview, this time with with Paul Bimson and Joe Walsh (both BT), who tell us a little about the story of the planning and installation process so far. Later in the 8-minute video we also talk about next steps and where to find out about pricing. Hopefully both video and the post below will answer most of your questions.

Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

Impressive efforts by BT and Openreach

During the 90 minute meeting the campaign team (Cordelia Webb, Carolyn Bell, Andy Coles and Michael Koch) learned about the lengths BT will go to in order to bring fibre broadband to our area. "Over 129km of fibre cable and thousands of man days of work" will be invested to upgrade the existing infrastructure, explained Joe Walsh, Programme Manager, SFBB, BT Group. Mick Bains (Openreach) gave us a little insight into new and unforseen challenges his team had to deal with so far, like blocked tubes and pipes which are used as a conduit for the new fibre cabling. Other difficulties for the Openreach team were those communities on the fringes of the rollout area, such as Weston and Leamington Hastings. However in all cases, the BT and Openreach engineers were able to come up with technical solutions which satisfied the campaigners. According to BT's calculations, about "99.8% of all exchange connections will see an improvement in broadband speed" when subscribing to the new SFBB products.

Read more: Infinity campaigners meet BT and Openreach

Race Night a great success for the Museum

Written by Bobbie Bolam

The fund-raising “Race Night” held on 12 November in the Village Hall jointly by the Cricket Club and the Museum group proved to be a great success.    Over 70 people attended and the Hall was packed.  The buffet supper was pronounced to be excellent.  Bets were placed liberally on the night and each race generated a huge amount of excitement, raising the decibel levels considerably! The total profit was £850 which is being split equally between the Museum and the Cricket Club, giving each organisation a magnificent sum of £425 which will provide us with some much-needed funds to cover some of our more minor ongoing expenses.   Many thanks to everyone who attended, bought a horse, sponsored a race or helped behind the scenes. For a full report on this event see the entry on the Cricket Club page.

We are still waiting to hear if our grant application from a local company has been successful.  Classification work has more or less come to a halt on account of Arctic conditions in the Museum during the winter months but work continues in attempting to obtain grants.

The Hall was packed                                                                                         An excellent buffet supper