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Visits - Trust Annual Report 1982

On a chilly Saturday in February seventeen members of the New Folkestone Society arrived by train for a day visit. After seeing the Great Hall and viewing the work on the Sally Port as well as discussing the holm oak site with the Frink sculpture, the party moved on to see the Chernocke Place porches and the proposed Kings Head Yard development before observing St. John's Street and projected 'Chesgate' scheme. Lunch was spent discussing mutual problems and, en route to the Cathedral, the party was intrigued to see the carved stone name 'Folkestone Place' in the stream wall near Abbey House, Regrettably none of us, nor correspondence later in the Hampshire Chronicle, could explain the origins of the name. Our President then conducted the Folkestone visitors on a perambulation of the Cathedral and College area before it was time for them to leave.

As a result of the visit to Winchester by the Oxford Preservation Trust in 1981, over fifty members of the Winchester Preservation Trust travelled to Oxford in early June. Welcomed to lunch in the 1911 neo-Jacobean Union, our party split into groups each specialising in a particular facet of Oxford, (thoughtfully labelled strenuous and less strenuous). The strenuous, including a good sprinkling of septuagenarians, walked the Woodstock Road (briefly in the company of Sir Harold Wilson) before threading their way through Somerville College, hideously overlooked by the Radcliffe Infirmary, and then passed underneath a delightful mews to see the famous Observatory. There followed an interesting perambulation of the St. Barnabus area, now being improved, and we were intrigued at the skill of the bricklaying in a reconstructed cottage which contrasted with our own rather bland new houses in St. John's Street. The solitude of Worcester College was then compared with the bustle of the St. Ebbe's shopping area, the new ring road and the new housing built on the river bank formerly occupied by the gas works, where clever conversions have been made of the old pipe and railway bridges. Coming to famous Broad Walk by Christ Church, now sadly devoid of its elms but with splendid vistas, our group meandered back past the Radcliffe Library to a welcome tea, already nearly consumed by the 'less strenuous'' Our thanks to the Oxford Trust.

C.J.W.