TrustNews Dec 19

Chairman's Jottings

Thank you

 

Voluntary organisations up and down the country stand or fall by their volunteers. Some volunteers undertake a considerable amount of work behind the scenes which is always in danger of going unrecognised.

 

Jo Gordon-Watson is one example. Jo quietly got on with a task, always refusing to have help, and did not want effusive praise for the jobs she has undertaken over many years. Recently Jo has had to retire from the work she undertook due to health problems. An example of one of the many things she undertook was the organising of Christmas cards for a number of charities in Winchester, including the Trust.

 

As we discovered this year, this is a big task. First of all over 3000 cards had to be ordered, printed and folded. These then had to be counted out into packs and placed in cellophane envelopes and labelled, ready to take to the Christmas card shop and then topped up as necessary. Sounds easy! We certainly did not realise the amount of work involved - it has taken a number of us to fill the gap left by Jo.

 

Thank you Jo for all the work you have undertaken for us. We certainly miss you.

 

Another person who has undertaken a great deal of work for the Trust over the years is Barrie Brinkman. Barrie built our first website, and then got involved with our archive collection of photos and documents, which was in a mess to say the least. Together with Trust member Rick Anderson, they have completely reorganised the archives so that in the future research material can be more easily accessed. On top of that, Barrie built and manages the Trust's archives website, which included digitising most of our collection of old photos so they can be viewed online. Barrie also produced a digital version of Andrew Rutter's unique but out of print book Winchester: Heart of a City (the digital version is available from the Trust shop). This was no mean task.

 

Much to our relief, Barrie, although retiring as a Trustee, will still be taking responsibility for the archives website.

 

Thank you Barrie for all that you have undertaken and are still undertaking.

 

Last but by no means least, l would like to thank Judith Rich, whose time as a Trustee came to an end in October. As membership secretary, Judith played an important role in reorganising the Trust's membership records and systems - a huge task - and can always be counted upon to help with TrustNews mailings and other important duties.

 

Local Plan workshops

 

Winchester City Council has recently organised three workshops to discuss the Local Plan, which is currently in the process of being revised. We were invited to participate together with a cross section of developers, residents, architects, planners and other stakeholders.

 

The first workshop was concerned with how to deliver schemes with good design principles. The relevant clauses in the current Local Plan were examined and ways to strengthen these were discussed, so that they will be robust enough to have a real impact on the way the built environment is considered, developed and delivered.

 

The subject of workshop number two was Winchester City. John Beveridge reports on this workshop latter in this Newsletter.

 

The final workshop concerned towns and villages within the district of Winchester.

 

We did not attend this workshop as it was outside our remit.

 

Before the Covid pandemic we started to reorganise the Trust by forming groups to take responsibility for various aspects of Trust work. We hoped that this would encourage people to volunteer to help with work in which they had a direct interest. Unfortunately the pandemic took over and has lasted much longer than I am sure we all anticipated. The end result is that we have been unable to do much of what we intended. Covid is obviously still around, and we are therefore being very cautious. I just hope that in 2022 we can become more adventurous so that we can launch some of the plans we had in mind at the beginning of 2020.

 

Best wishes to you all for 2022.

 

Keith Leaman