Chalgrave News Issue 53 – December 2016.

Issue 53, December 2016.

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The latest issue of the Chalgrave News (Issue 53, December 2016) is now available to view here, or browse other past issues.

Welcome to what might turn out to be the last but one edition of the Chalgrave News. If you would like to help out in order to ensure that this magazine continues to land on your door mats every quarter, please read our appeal on page 9 and then get in touch!

Not much shocks the News team but we were staggered by the reaction to a sentence printed in our September issue. One of our regular contributors wrote – “… on my way home through our villages (Tebworth and Wingfield) I was just remarking to my wife how lucky we are to live in these villages which are “quintessentially English” … We have a pub (two in fact, but possibly not two for much longer), a church, a cricket green, a village hall, and we had at least two chapels and two schools …”. An innocent and true reflection on our parish, you would think? Well, that’s what we assumed, but we were astonished to discover that someone took exception to the phrase “quintessentially English”. The use of this well-established expression was reported to the police and recorded by them as a Hate Crime. Fortunately, the police quickly came to their senses, but the process of “unlogging” it as a Hate Crime proved to be a lot more difficult than logging it in the first place. Goodness knows how many hours of police time and how much taxpayers’ money were wasted unravelling this nonsense. We are reaching a sad state of affairs when we can no longer describe villages in England as being quintessentially English.

As you’ll be aware from our last edition, and from the goings-on in Chalgrave of late, the Charles Wells brewery has notified the Parish Council of its intention to dispose of the Queen’s Head. The pub was, of course, registered as a Community Asset in 2013. This means we have a period of six months, starting from the time of the brewery’s notification, to make an offer to purchase the pub from the brewery for the benefit of the community. When this period expires, the brewery can dispose of the premises as they wish and, even if we do submit a community bid, Charles Wells is under no obligation to accept our offer. There is, therefore. a lot to be done over the next few months if the Queen’s Head is to be saved. Already a company has been set up – “The Tebworth Community Pub Ltd” – which will be responsible for submitting any bids to Charles Wells. In the meantime, funds need to be raised, be they through grants and donations, or by the sale of shares. Watch out for much activity in the months ahead – a business plan has already been published on savethequeenshead.org.uk.
Once again the 10–10 Festival of Cricket, rescheduled from June to September, and advertised in our last issue, had to be cancelled, the reason being the same as last time, namely a serious shortage of teams willing to take on the might of Chalgrave.

If you have any articles or stories to contribute to the next edition, please contact Roger Parker on 01525 874910 or email. To advertise in the Chalgrave News, please call 01525 873963 or email. Deadline for the next edition is Wednesday 15th February 2017.

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3 comments

  1. I have spent many a happy hour visiting the Queens Head and can only say it has been an absolute delight to sit in the sunshine in this most quintessentially English village. I cannot believe that anyone would be so small minded to believe otherwise or indeed that the Police have so little to do with their time and our money, dealing with a so-called”hate crime”. This truly is a fine example of a (dare I say it?) quintessentially (defined by the Oxford (a quintessentially English university recognised the world over) English dictionary as, Representing the most perfect or typical example of a quality or class. That seems a fair definition to me of Chalgrave where I for one would love to live!

  2. Well said above, although to say “small minded” implies they have a mind, I’d say mindless…
    What’s really irritating, is the police seemed to take it seriously in the first place.
    Carry on your good work for the benefit of your community.

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