Chairman's Report MARCH 2021

2020

There was not a great deal of activity for the Society in 2020 although it started well with a particularly good presentation by Mick Fitchew on Peckwash Mill on 13th January. This included a piece on the modernisation of the house on the site. The owner, David Boutcher and his mother were present at the meeting.

The February meeting, with a talk on Bennerley Viaduct by Keiron Lee was due to take place on the 10th but had to be postponed because of a snowstorm.

Rita Bailey was our speaker on March 9th, and she talked about the Derby Isolation Hospital. With hindsight I can appreciate the irony of that talk since within two weeks Covid 19 had arrived, and the first lockdown meant that all social gatherings were cancelled. I can remember thinking that after an extended summer break we would be able to resume in September. Little did I know! No further meetings took place until the 14th of December when we ran a Zoom meeting, the speaker being Keiron Lee and the subject being Bennerley Viaduct, the meeting cancelled the previous February. With a few relatively minor glitches this meeting was a success and with the Covid situation continuing, it was decided to continue with Zoom in the new year.

2021

Further Zoom meetings have been held in February 8th and March 8th. These were Robert Mee talking about Village Lock Ups and Ruth and Philip Hunter talking about the Outwoods. At this point I would like to thank Gwent Paylor for organising these meetings and although we have had some problems, we will continue with three further Zoom presentations. The meetings are:

April 12th – Tim Castledine on “The Ironclads, HMS Warrior and Codnor Park Forge”

May 10th - David Amos on “Ay Up Me Duck, The Dialects of Derbyshire”

June 14th – Robert Mee on “Pub Signs – What the Historian Can Learn”

I may be making the same mistake as last year, but my thoughts are to halt proceedings in July and August and resume normal service in September.

Not for the first time I would like to thank Alex Galloway, and his son in law Dominik, for the excellent work they have done on our website. They have been busy revamping it recently and have gone to a different provider after experiencing problems with the original provider. The result of their efforts is a better website packed with information about the village. We receive comments and enquiries from all over the world from people with Little Eaton connections. For example, we have had correspondence from a lady in her eighties. Her father, a Mr Gately, was school headmaster in the village in the 1920s and 1930s and she, Josephine Gately, was born in the village. She left Little Eaton in the 1950s to go to America and now lives in Cincinnati Ohio. She sings the praises of our web site. I was in conversation recently with one of the committee members at Aston on Trent History Society and he was praising our website. Nice comment from someone who has been at this “history business” a lot longer than we have. Other Galloway family members have also been involved.  Sally, Alex's wife, has posted comments about the Society on Facebook and Tessa, his daughter, has used Instagram. My thanks to them for bringing us to a larger and without doubt a younger audience.

John Easter

However future plans may turn out for the Society this year the most far-reaching event will remain the death of John Easter on January17th. John was “Mister Little Eaton” and the inspiration behind the creation of the Society in 2016 and the only possible choice to be our President. He was my “go to” man for information when we received queries and I shall miss him immensely in this respect and as a personal friend. We always intended that a photograph of John be put up in the OAP Hall and we have a lovely photograph of him in his garden last summer. The plan is that he will go on the wall beside photographs of Peter Brady and Ted Preedy, two Little Eaton worthies from yesteryear. I very much hope that we can have an unveiling at our first meeting back.

Shortly after John's death, Matthew, his son, sent me an email stating that along with John's daughter Sarah they would wish to donate £10,000 from their father's estate to be used for heritage projects in the village. Matthew explained that his dad did not issue any specific instruction about this, but they felt sure that he would approve of such a gesture. Matthew also made it clear that they were not imposing any time scale on this so it is clear that we do not need to make any immediate decision on how to use the money. Naturally, I thanked Matthew and Sarah for such a wonderful gesture.

The blessing is that John's vast collection of Little Eaton memorabilia has been catalogued and my thanks to Rosemary Gregory for her efforts in that respect. It has also been scanned on to the website and therefore is available to view.

As you will be aware the material was kept in John's “Little Eaton room” at his home.

With the co-operation of Matthew I have now moved it to the hay loft at Sue Carter's house where it will remain until a permanent home is found for it. I am very grateful to Sue for her help in the unloading of the material from my car into the hay loft and for allowing us to relocate the material to what is a secure and dry location.

Future Plans

Everything that I have written so far in this report has happened or is likely to happen.

I am now entering an area where I am speculating on what might be possible in the future. I have talked for a long time about having a Heritage Centre in the village. Two possible sites are the Parish Rooms or the old Mill Office Building at Mill Green. However, I think that thoughts of these can be quickly discarded given that there would be considerable expense even if they were available and then there would be ongoing costs of running expenses. There is a Heritage Room in the Village Hall, but this is used for small meetings and the Village Preschool use it from time to time. Access to the Heritage Room is via the Lower Hall and this is not entirely satisfactory. The room is probably too small to house all our documentation (from John's) plus a few seats and a table.

However, I have recently met informally with Simon Downing (Parish Council Chairman) and Neil Gascoyne (Chairman of the Village Hall Management Committee) and I was much encouraged by that discussion. Proposals are at a very early stage but there are suggestions that the Village Hall could be extended, and part of that extension would be a Heritage Room. I think that it is fair to say that Simon and Neil are on board with that suggestion. One of the proposals in the Neighbourhood Plan is “Improvements to St Peter’s Park and the Village Hall”. Simon and Neil have agreed to involve the History Society in future discussions.

It only remains for me to say that I hope all of you keep well in these troubled times and that things will return to normal whatever NORMAL is in the future

Bill Hutchison