The Village of Wark

Archive for January, 2010

You might remember that I mentioned the vacancy on Wark Parish Council before Christmas.  This vacancy had arisen because Craig Moore and his family moved to Hexham last year and Craig resigned his seat.  When the Parish Council met last Monday it appeared that just one person had put themselves forward to join the Parish Council and Margit Stoksted was duly co-opted onto the group. 

The Mid Tyne Business Forum also met last week and elected a committee to run its affairs.  The Business Forum has been created to encourage like-minded business owners to meet regularly and to share ideas and experiences.  The group intends to hold Forum meetings every quarter with the next one being in Wall in March.  At these Forum meetings there will generally be one or two speakers.  In addition they will hold networking events at local cafes and tearooms around the area.

The Town Hall is heading for a busy February.  Next Monday, February 1^st, Wark History Group will have a speaker from the Chollerton Parish history Society to talk about the history of Barrasford and Gunnerton.  There will be refreshments and tickets are £2.

Then on Saturday February 13^th, Joseph Oliver and friends will play at the Town Hall for a dance.  Tickets are only £5 and you’re asked to bring something for a shared supper.  On the weekend after, the 20^th, the Hall will host a table top sale, which always proves to be very popular.  Tables are £6 each and you can book them through Judith Weir (01434- 230250). A great chance to try to turn some of you unwanted stuff into cash.

Then right at the end of the month, on Saturday 27^th of February, the Northumberland Theatre Company will bring their play ‘A Village Life’.  You might remember that the writer Mary Cooper came to our Friday Coffee Morning some months back to talk to people about village life and those conversations (and many others in other locations) have now culminated in this play. Tickets for the play are £8 and £5 for concessions and are also available from Judith.

Thankfully, much of the snow and ice seems to have disappeared for the moment at least, although there are some treacherous patches still in odd corners.  What all this snowmelt has revealed is just how shockingly back all this stuff for our roads and pavements.  Never perfect at the best of times, we seem to have acquired a complete new series of potholes and broken up bits of tarmac.  One of the most intriguing is the pronounced hump that has appears at the village end of the bridge.  From a distance it looks a bit like a small speed hump, just at the point where the access onto the bridge has been narrowed.

One of the more positive things to appear from under the snow, is some early signs of approaching spring.  I know there could be much more winter weather under way, but I can’t help being cheered up by the first signs of snowdrops.  You may well tell you that you’ve seen snowdrops out in various places, but along the riverside I noticed some where the white of the flowers is just showing.

On a more mundane note, I can let you know that the Mid Tyne Community trust will be holding its AGM in the Town Hall on Thursday 28^th of January starting at 7.30 p.m. Issues on the agenda include ‘Becoming the Community Forum for the Mid Tyne area’, there will be a report from the Mid Tyne Business Forum and talks from our own Philip Wanless and Colin Earnshaw of the Northumberland national Park Authority about renewable energy and sustainable energy.  Anyone living or working in the Mid Tyne area can be involved in the Trust, so you will be most welcome at the AGM.

Those of you who made it to John Kirkpatrick’s performance before Christmas, would probably agree with me that Carolling and Crumpets was a real treat. What you might not have realized that we were very lucky to have been early in the series of concerts in the North of England: I understand the performance at Haydon Bridge on the following Saturday was cancelled because John wasn’t well enough to perform. At the Wark preformance the Hall was well filled and people were in pretty good voice, joining in with the choruses from the very start. Mr Kirkpatrick is clearly a very accomplished concertina and accordion player, but his lyrics are pretty special too. There were great wassailing songs from Shropshire and Gloucestershire as well as more well know traditional carols such as the Boar’s Head Carol and the Holly and the Ivy. All in all another fantastic evening of traditional music, thanks to the wonderful Highlights programme.