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Dropped from the September 2009 issue

VISIT TO REDBOURNBURY MILL - Susan Johnson reports

You may remember I advertised a possible visit to the Mill at our AGM on 1st April, following the very interesting talk given by its owner’s son in our last season of talks. A number of you signed up, and fourteen of us made it on Saturday 14th August. It was a glorious afternoon, and the Mill is certainly located in a glorious setting just outside St. Albans.

Following a very warm welcome, we were treated to a tour of the watermill, starting on the top floor and following down the grain’s passage through the milling process and into the sacks. The Mill is full of memorabilia of those who owned and worked it; and one got a real sense of the long history of milling on the site for the last millennium, at the very least.

Following the talk we had a delicious, home-baked cream tea, followed by time to wander around the site and appreciate its context.

Finally we went to buy bread and cakes. I managed to bag some rye bread and some teacake (more like Christmas cake, really); but I was disappointed not to be able to obtain some spelt bread. It’s our current obsession! Have you tried to buy it in Waitrose at 5 pm? It’s always gone by then. I complain bitterly; and the section manager explains that he tries to keep it back, but it’s so popular! Spelt is an ancient form of wheat, and it is extremely difficult to grow in this country. The yield is low and the growing conditions hard to maintain. So there’s not much available for making bread – and what there is, is expensive.  So, more spelt, please!

Many thanks to Rita for organising the trip, and to the owners for making it memorable! If you want to go on your own, look at their website www.redbournmill.co.uk  for directions and other information. The Mill is generally open on Sunday afternoons from 2.30 to 5 pm.

Also

David Woodward  - an appreciation by John Cook (shortened version appeared in the newsletter)
It was a great shock when we learned of the death of David Woodward, although we had been aware that he had been unwell for some time. He was an active member of the BCA committee until just a few weeks before his death.

David was a long-standing member of our Association. A few years ago when there was a need for capable people willing to serve on the committee, typically David stepped forward and became a valuable member, representing us on the Crime Prevention Panel. Incidentally, on the committee he found himself at meetings being held in his old house in Shrublands Road, even sitting on the old pew that the present owner, Susan Johnson, had inherited from him.

At his memorial service in All Saints Church on 10 August, a number of warm tributes were paid to him. After family recollections by his daughter. a colleague spoke of his time at St John’s College Cambridge (where he got a first), and of his whole working life spent at the Bank of England. I then did my best to compress into a few minutes a record of what David achieved in Berkhamsted. Finally Ruth Treves-Brown spoke of just some of the things he did at All Saints’ Church.  

David came to the town in 1965 and soon committed himself to serving the church. For the next 44 years it was All Saints’ Church that benefited from his membership and deep involvement. He was churchwarden and held all sorts of other responsibilities, large and small, including in recent years arranging for people to be given lifts to church who otherwise could not get there. He helped to see through great changes at All Saints’ from when it was simply a daughter church of St Peter’s, through the time when the church was re-ordered and the partnership with the Methodists was set up, right up to recent times and the granting of near independence to All Saints. If any man was a pillar there, it was he.

In 1968, over 40 years ago, David took on the editorship of the Berkhamsted Review. In some ways he was a reluctant editor, and when anyone else came forward to take the job on, he was happy to hand it over. But when that person gave up, David was quite prepared to take it back, as he did on two occasions. It was not his way to attempt to stamp his personal mark on the magazine, but his editorship was very effective in the way he kept its broad appeal by persuading others to provide quality articles and pictures, giving the Review its special reputation and interest. For example he arranged for regular contribution of photographs by Eric Holland, sketches and portraits by Harry Sheldon, the articles by Percy Birtchnell (sometimes two in an issue), and more recently the contributions of people like Ian Reay. And even after he finally handed over the editorship just a few years ago, he agreed to continue to perform the unglamorous but important role of advertising manager. If it needed to be done, he would do it.

A number of people who knew David have spoken warmly to me of him, from different angles. He was not a shouter from the housetops; not someone who sought to push his views before others, but very likeable, and very effective in his own way. We so need people like him.  Our sympathy goes to his wife Pauline and all his family.

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