Issue 25 July-September 2019 Magazine -...

Heart of England U3A, Stratford-upon-Avon Website: www.heartofenglandu3a.btck.co.uk

Magazine. 1st July — 30th September 2019 Page No 1

July-September 2019 Magazine Issue 25

Editor: Edwin Lilly

Email: edwin [email protected]

Welcome to the July to September 2019 edition of our Magazine. This issue runs from 1st July to 30th September and is an archive of some of our activities.

Reports include:

Garden Appreciation Group—July

Outings Trip to Tetbury and Chavenage House—August

Day Out Group trip to Evesham - August

Main Meeting—September

Theatre Group September Meeting—The Mikado

Walking Group September meeting—Ilmington

Science, Nature & All Things Technical Group—September Meeting.

Last update: 25th September 2019

Chinese Pavilion in Firs Garden, Stratford-upon-Avon, July 2019



Garden Appreciation Group Field trip—9th July 2019 Visit to Stoneleigh Abbey

Our group visited Stoneleigh Abbey this month. It was a fine, dry morning, so we had a lovely walk around the grounds. The land-scaping was done by Humphry Repton and included a 'lake' formed from the river

Avon with a gazebo bridge. There were sev-eral very fine old specimen trees, including a thousand year old oak tree. Also, a fine orangery café and great views.

View of

Stoneleigh Abbey

A sluice, part of the water management system

The Group at Stoneleigh

Abbey



Outings Trip to Tetbury and Chavenage House Field trip—20th August 2019

Thirty members of Heart of England U3A boarded the coach at either the Henley De-pot or at Stratford Leisure Centre for the trip to Tetbury, about 90 minutes trip. Tetbury is a Cotswold town south of Ciren-cester and is a charming stone built town with a typical large ‘wool’ church. We ar-rived at about 11.00am and most people’s thought were looking for a coffee outlet, of which there were many in the town, as we soon found out. We had free time to ex-plore the town and eat some lunch before we were due back on the coach for 1.30pm. The town plan is a fairly simple cross for-mation with a very old Market House at the cross-road in the centre. There were many shops, mostly fairly small and a mix of cafes antique shops, interior design (almost an-other word for antiques), pubs and restau-rants, and occasional shops selling local pro-duce, gifts, etc. One such shop was the Highgrove shop on Long Street. They were having a midsummer sale so prices were a bit lower than normal. The writer did not explore the church on this occasion and will have to return in the future. There must be other, more modern shops in a part of the town not explored so far, so another trip is strongly forecast!

Chavenage House is not far from Tetbury

and is a family owned historic house. It has been used as a film location for quite a few films and TV dramas, the latest being “Poldark”, when it was used as the residence of George Warleggan. Both exterior and



Outings Trip to Tetbury and Chavenage House Field trip—20th August 2019 (continued)

“Poldark”, when it was used as the residence of George Warleggan. Both exterior and interior scenes were shot here. The guided tour was very well done with lots of inter-esting details. There have been only two families who owned the house in all the cen-turies it has been in existence. The last

change of family was during the 19th Centu-ry.



Day Out Group—Visit to Evesham Wednesday 28th August 2019

Two members of the group made it onto the number 18X bus at 09.30 to make the trip to Evesham. The day started off a bit dull and cool, but did warm up when the sun came out. We were forecast some rain but we did not see any until nearer 4.00pm af-ter we had returned home.

Evesham is a small market town which de-veloped during the late Saxon and early Norman periods around the Abbey which started about 700AD. The Abbey was closed during the Henry VIII dissolution of the monasteries during the early 16th cen-tury. The land and buildings were sold. The main Abbey building was used as a quarry for building stone whilst some of the other buildings were used for other purposes. All Saints Church is the Parish Church for Eve-sham. Just a few yards away is St Law-rence’s Church which is under the care of

the Churches Conservation Trust. It is open to visitors and is still used for occasional services or events. The Bell Tower is also just a few yards away and was built only about 20-30 years before the dissolution of the monasteries.

The town started to develop after the ab-bey was founded and King Edward granted the right to hold a market in 1055. The High Street is a very wide street and burg-age plots appear to run off from it, with other streets at right angles. The whole town and abbey lie within a large loop of the River Avon. This results in some flooding of the levels next to the river at times. The surrounding Valr of Evesham has been an excellent farming area for many years, spe-cialising in fruit and market gardening.



Day Out Group—Visit to Evesham Wednesday 18th April 2019



Main Meeting—Thursday 5th September 2019 Talk—Moving Borders - A true story of Josephine

Tramer, given by Annie Louisa Harrison

Annie Harrison came to our meeting and gave us a moving account about the life of a woman that she met about 20 years ago and who was in her late 70’s when they met. At the time Annie was living in a Yorkshire vil-lage near Bingley in West Yorkshire and Jo-sephine lived nearby and attended the same chapel for a time.

Annie has written a book about the life of Josephine Tramer “Moving Borders”, the life story of Josephine Tramer. It re-counts how world politics moved borders within Europe and Josephine had to move from her country of birth to save her life at times. The book is available from Brewin Books Ltd. Of Studley, Warwickshire.

Josephine Tramer (known as Jo) was born 1st January 1910 in Lvov, Poland, now Ukraine. Her parents, Moses and Klara Tramer were of Jewish heritage. The fami-ly moved to Vienna about 1924. She attend-ed school and college and later worked as a shorthand typist for a company in Vienna from 1927 to 1938. She had some good lan-guage skills which helped her obtain work at various stages during her life. Following the annexation of Austria by the Nazi regime in Germany persecution of the Jews began and many people escaped by moving into other European countries, including France and Britain. She came to England on 17th May 1939. Her mother had made an application for her to come to England as an au pair and she found a position with a family in Bingley.

In May 1940 Jo was arrested from her home in Bingley. She was interned on the Isle of Man, along with many other German

and Austrian nationals. She was released in March 1941 and she returned to Bingley. She enlisted in the Auxiliary Territorial Service of the British Army on 7th August 1941. She was employed as a clerk but little detail is available. However, she was award-ed the France and German Star along with two other medals. This medal was awarded for operational service in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Germany from June 1944 to May 1945. The army ex-tended her service by another two years. She was discharged in 1948. Jo did try to find out what became of her mother, but she did not survive the war, having been sent to the Riga Camp in Latvia.

Post war civilian life did not hold her for long and she joined the Army again on 10th May 1948, the Scottish End (M) Signal Reg-iment. This second period of army service ended in 1950 and Jo returned to West Yorkshire. She found work in Bradford where her language skills were useful. In 1961 she settled in East Morton, near Keighley. She died in 2010, having reached her centenary.

There is much more detail in the book and it is well worth a read.



Theatre Group Saturday 7th September 2019

Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Mikado”

A full coach of U3A members set off from Stratford Leisure Centre car park in a Johnsons Coaches vehicle at 12.30 pm on Saturday 7th September bound for the Festival Theatre at Malvern for a matinee performance of “The Mikado”. This was to be performed by The National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company as part of a national Gilbert & Sullivan Festival centred on Har-rogate but with performances in Buxton and Malvern.

The performance was excellent with good, clear singing from the cast and supporting singers, well choreographed and with plenty of humour. It was a thoroughly well per-formed favourite of the Gilbert & Sullivan

tradition. We had several members of our party who have performed in G & S produc-tions in their younger days and they were very impressed by the performance. Person-ally, I found it it entertaining and entranc-ing and will certainly look to see more per-formances in the future.

The Gilbert & Sullivan Festival takes place over several weeks during August and Sep-tember in several centres and it would be well worth looking for the festival details next year.

The Festival Theatre, Malvern.

https://www.ngsoc.org/malvern-theatre/



Walking Group Wednesday 11th September 2019

Walk around Ilmington

Nine members, both old and new, of the Walking Group assembled in Ilmington vil-lage by the village shop for the monthly walk. This one was led by Malcolm and Elaine and was about 5 miles in length, all on firm paths. The route was roughly circular and took in Compton Scorpion. There was one new member and twp prospective mem-bers.

The weather was dry and pleasant except for some drizzle over the central section of hills.

The report and photographs were provided by Malcolm and Elaine.

The group pictured along the route of the walk



Science Nature and all Things Technical Group Friday 13th September 2019

“The Human Aspect of Car Manufacture A Talk given by Tony

Tony worked for quite a few years for Peugeot Cars at Ryton near Coventry and also at other plants. I will try to give a brief synopsis of his talk. The talk was very interesting and entertaining, was sprinkled with sufficient images to illustrate the con-tent effectively and led to many questions both during the talk and at the end. We had been asked to view a 2 part BBC 4 programme about the Mini factory at Cowley, which also il-lustrated quite well the continu-ous dialogue going on all the time to improve efficiency and the easing of troublesome manufac-turing processes and conditions on the production line.

Car manufacture can be de-scribed by the basic processes used to manufacture and these can be split across a few basic steps.

Pressing

Body in White

Paint

Assembly and fitting out

Robots are used at all stages of manufacture and remove the stress and monotony from the operation. Much effort goes into keeping handling heavy parts, tools and assemblies to a mini-mum and providing mechanical

assistance to the workforce where appro-priate. Suggestion schemes are actively pursued whereby line workers can input ide-as to assist in improving conditions and effi-ciencies for themselves.

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