Local interest

News about The Bull

~ BAACA

At last! After a very long wait, the District Council planning dept. have agreed all the necessary conditions attached to the planning permission granted way back in January 2018 and work can now commence on the new children’s nursery.

Hardcore has been laid for the base of the new building and an entrance created through the hedge onto the Chesham Road. Once work on the actual building commences, it is planned to post a video blog on YouTube so that anyone interested in the construction of this unique building can follow its progress.

Once the building has been completed and the nursery has relocated there from the old pub then work can start on The Bull itself. Besides a complete internal refurbishment, this work includes the addition of a new entrance and atrium and a restaurant extension at the rear, sympathetically designed to compliment the existing structure.

Further details will be posted to www.bellingdon.com as they become available.

Andrew Barratt

Community association news

~ BAACA

Bellingdon and Asheridge Community Association (BAACA for short) is up and running following our name change which was approved at the AGM. Our new trustees have got stuck in straight away and are helping us to deliver our many ongoing projects (see below for more details).

We are, however, still in need of a secretary. The role consists of compiling an agenda, circulating minutes and minimal amounts of additional correspondence. If you feel you might be able to help with this please contact any of the current trustees or contact@bellingdon.com

Village hall goes keyless

Those of you who have used the hall recently will have noticed a change in access arrangements. We’ve installed a keypad entry system in order to reduce the amount of time our volunteer bookings secretary has to spend giving out and collecting keys for the various hires during the week and weekend.

Some of the weekend hires do not finish until midnight, so making sure that the hirers have returned the keys on time is an onerous task, one which has been undertaken for the last seven years by the very dedicated Chris and Julie Hood.

Newsletter update

The December newsletter will be out shortly and looks a bit different. We thought that it deserved a bit of a refresh, and we hope you like the result!

We’d also like to start including more news of what people have been up to starting with the Spring edition next year, where we’re hoping to have news of an expedition to Nepal, among other things. If you and yours have an achievement you’d like to share (for example, new baby, marriage, leaving school, winning a prize, a “significant” birthday etc) do please let us know.

Floor refurbishment
During the Christmas period (16th-24th to be precise) the hall will be closed to enable a full refurbishment of our lovely parquet floor to be carried out. We hope that this will refresh the surface and make it easier to keep clean.

Christmas 2018 – what’s on in Bellingdon and Asheridge

~ BAACA

There is a wonderful variety of Christmas activities available in the village this year – from the Children’s Party on 1st December and the Seniors’ Christmas Lunch on the 2nd to a community pub night on the 14th and “Welcome to Bethlehem” (children’s activities) in the church on Thursday 20th from 3-4:30pm.

There’s also a carol service at the church on Sunday 23rd (10am), the traditional Christmas Eve service at Huge Farm from 4pm (by kind permission of Anka and John Taylor) and a Christmas morning service at the church at 10am on the 25th.

Village Hall full for its 70th Birthday Party

~ BAACA

What a fantastic afternoon! Around 100 people of all ages packed the Village Hall on Saturday afternoon to pay tribute to the place that this wonderful building holds within our community.

We had tea, sandwiches and cakes, an exhibition of recent and past history, an audiovisual slideshow of what has been going on at the hall in the last ten years, entertainment from The Nightingales and the opening of the refurbished kitchen by Alan Page.

Huge thanks to the hall management committee for funding the event, to the Bellingdon Belles for catering and to everyone who helped by lending us equipment for the slideshow as well as photos, articles and other artefacts for the exhibition. Particular thanks to Jane Edmunds for her sterling efforts in hammering pins into a particularly unwilling backdrop! And of course to Helen Harding for marshalling the whole thing even when it looked like climbing Everest might have been easier.

We’d love to hear what you thought of the event so please do let us know – either by talking to a committee member or by emailing us. We’re having a think about what else we can do to keep people coming to the hall so if you have any ideas – bingo, coffee morning, film night, karaoke etc – do let us know as well!

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Village Hall 70th: THIS SATURDAY 10th November 4-7pm

~ BAACA

Don’t forget to let us know ASAP by email (contact@bellingdon.com) or phone (758901) if you’re planning to come on Saturday tea time to celebrate our wonderful community hall. We’ve had a fantastic response so far, and it would really help with catering to know how many people we’re expecting.

Please do feel free to dress in vintage clothing, bring along photographs etc of your memories of the hall – we’ll be having a “memory wall” where you can share your reminiscences so that we can record them for future generations.