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Natland & Oxenholme Table Tennis Club are holding a Quiz Night on Saturday 11 November 2017 at Natland Village Hall starting at 7.30pm.
There will be a Pie & Pea Supper (with veggie alternative).
Cost is £5 each with teams of around 4 members.
Tickets can be bought from the Post Office at Natland or call Carol Catnach (see poster image).
President Kirsten Cannon welcomed 26 members and 20 visitors to the open meeting.
President Kirsten congratulated members on the group and individual successes at the recent Westmorland County Show – 1 Gold, 3 Silver and a Red awarded for the group entry of biscuits. She also congratulated members Joan Airey and Kate Toms on over 20 entries which had received many awards.
President Kirsten then welcomed Maurice Steele who gave an audio/visual presentation entitled ‘It should have been stopped’. Maurice accompanied by his ‘team members’ Sally Harpon and Old Grump, took members on a journey through Lakeland from the Ice Age, to the present day posing the question what sort of Lakeland would we have if various decisions had been stopped.
Through stunning photography showcasing the beauty of nature and accompanied by poignant music, Maurice asked members to consider how our landscape would look if land clearance, mining, railways, roads, mass tourism and other factors had been stopped.
Elaine Close gave the vote of thanks.
The competition for a sheep was won by Lynne Procter with Joan Ratcliffe in second place.
Raffle prizes were won by Nancy Toft, Pauline Causey and Betty Prickett.
Date of next meeting is October 18th at 7.15pm in Natland Village Hall when the guest speaker Pam Hetherington will speak on Foot care and Podiatry.
As published by The Westmorland Gazette, Friday 28 October 2016
CIVIC DUTY: Councillor Sylvia Emmott pictured (left) testing the new play area with the Mayor of Kendal Cllr Stephen Coleman and Emma Turner of Oxenholme Play Area Development (OPAD) who helped to raise the funding. Copyright Westmorland Gazette. 23/10/2016
JON GRANGER
A new-look £60,000 play area has opened in a South Lakeland town. Excited children joined councillors for the grand opening of the new play area at Bolefoot in Oxenholme on Saturday afternoon.
The community group Oxenholme Play Area Development (OPAD) helped raise funds for the project through a ‘crowdfunding’ appeal. It raised enough money to add a ‘space net’ climbing area to the scheme, which also includes brand new slides, swings, climbing frames, seating and shelters. There was also a £25,000 contribution from South Lakeland District Council (SLDC), £5,000 from Kendal Town Council and other funding from local councillors’ member budgets, charitable trusts, leisure organisations and local company donations.
OPAD chair and mum-of-three Emma Turner, said: “It has been a real community effort and lots of people have got involved, contributing funding and giving ideas about what they’d like to see in the park. We’ve been helped by SLDC, the town council, local businesses and charitable trusts and residents in Oxenholme have also paid towards it, we even had a sweetie jar in the local shop for donations. It should be something the whole community can be proud of because they have played such a big part in making this happen. The play area will be great for young people in the village. Because of Oxenholme’s relative isolation, it is the only park that is easily accessible and it is also the only real community space that we have where people of all ages can get together.’’
Playground manufacturers, HAGS SMP, designed the new play space incorporating ideas and suggestions from consultations run by OPAD in both 2014 and 2015, for a playground suitable for youngsters aged up to 14 that is accessible to both disabled and non-disabled users. Cllr Brenda Gray, SLDC ward councillor for Oxenholme and Natland, has also supported the project and contributed £3,000 funding through her last three years’ member allowances.
Oxenholme Play Area Development (OPAD) organiser Emma Turner with her son Isaac 6, and village youngsters who celebrated the opening event.
We’ve just added a page for the Natland and Oxenholme Tennis Club, founded in 1978, a thriving and friendly club based at Natland and Oxenholme Village Hall.
A TRACTOR driver who caused the death of a pedestrian in a Lake District road tragedy has been sentenced by a judge.
Angus James Freeman, a 33-year-old farmer, appeared at Carlisle Crown Court today.
He pleaded guilty to causing the death of 59-year-old great grandmother Elaine Steele by careless driving at Troutbeck Bridge, near Windermere, on February 6 last year.
Holiday park worker Miss Steele, of Oxenholme, was walking on a pavement alongside the A591 when she was struck by Freeman’s five-tonne Massey Ferguson tractor.
She suffered severe head and neck injuries, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The court heard Freeman had inexplicably failed to observe a “give way” sign and markings immediately before joining the A591 and striking Miss Steele.
But despite her heartbroken family wondering why, Freeman had no recollection nor explanation for exactly what happened on a route he used every day.
Having heard considerable mitigation on behalf of Freeman – a man of previous good character – Judge Barbara Forrester suspended a 24-week prison sentence for 12 months.
Freeman, of Town End Farm, Troutbeck, was also given a one-year driving ban and must pay £545 costs.
His lawyer, Anthony Haycroft, told the court: “Unfortunately this was a tragedy in the very true sense of the word.”
Westmorland Gazette, 8 August 2016
Selection of Christine Hunter titles …
Christine Hunter, born in 1910, was not only a schoolteacher, but also a writer and biographer. She is understood to have lived at Woodlands (no. 98) Helmside Road in later life.
Among her titles were:
| Year | Title |
| 1952 | Boy from Down Under |
| Bunty and Peter | |
| Coutier Treasure | |
| Escape to Adventure | |
| 1953 | Mysterious Neighbours |
| 1955 | Come on Spencers |
| Michael Graham, Police Cadet | |
| 1956 | Michael Graham, Police Constable |
| 1957 | Mystery of Tentenbury Manor |
| 1960 | Mystery of Cousin John |
| 1966 | Deep Waters |
| To Life Anew | |
| 1968 | Years of Our Days |
| 1969 | Guiding Light |
| 1972 | Annalisa |
| Gladys Aylward | |
| Secret of Tentenbury Manor | |
| Sparks Flying Upward | |
| 1974 | Anna’s Family |
| Bwana Masua | |
| 1976 | Day Will Dawn |
| Winding Road |
The undeveloped plots on Helmside Road. Photo copyright of Tony Hartley.
The photograph above, courtesy of Tony Hartley, shows the undeveloped plots which lie on the eastern side of Helmside Road, between number 53 (left-hand side) and number 47 (right-hand side). Immediately behind the undeveloped land are the properties on Scar View Road, then Bleaswood Road.
Long-time resident John Bateson tells us the properties were all built between 1968 and 1972 and that this particular piece of land was originally intended for the children’s playground. However, it was deemed to be too close to the road and so has remained undeveloped ever since.
In her fascinating short history of Oxenholme: The Railway Village (1995), Laura Oldham wrote about “Auntie Vi’s” shop and went on to say that Vi Atkinson ‘had an unusually distinctive birthday, beng born on the eighth day of the eighth month of 1888’.
However, further investigation reveals that Vi Atkinson, who was born Violet Emma Lord, was born on the eighth day of the eighth month, but in 1887 not 1888. Vi, who married Thomas Atkinson, died in 1978 aged 90. They lived at Helm Garth in Helmside Road.
But another Oxenholme resident, Florence Jellett, born Florence Caley, was born on the eighth day of the eighth month in 1888, according to her entry on the 1939 National Identity Register. Florence married railway porter George Jellett in 1918. They lived at 18 Helmside Cottages. Florence died in 1988, aged 99.
by Katie Dickinson
Works being carried out on Sunday, November 14
OXENHOLME residents have been kept awake all night for two weekends running due to ‘horrendous noise and vibration’ caused by works on the rail line.
Villagers described being ‘almost thrown out of bed’ in the early hours of Sunday morning as Network Rail engineers carried out noisy ‘pile driving’ on the track-side. The loud metallic banging awoke people on Helmside Road at 1am and continued intermittently until 5am. It marked the second Sunday in a row that residents had been woken up by the racket, with several leaving their beds to go down to the station and complain to the workers.
Helmside Road resident Stephen Warner said he had ‘never heard anything like’ the din in 22 years of living in the village. “We recognise that living next to a rail line and station brings some disruption and noise from time to time but this was beyond anything ever experienced in the past,” he said. Mr Warner’s wife Lizzii Nicholas said: “It’s not just the noise – the whole house was shaking and we worry about what it’s doing to the property foundations and the pipes.”
Stephen Warner and Lizzii Nicholas in their back garden, overlooking the site of the noisy engineering works
Since receiving several complaints, Network Rail has written to residents confirming that piling work will take place again over the next two weekends, and could continue for an extra weekend on March 6. The letter, from Community Relations Manager Sarah McArdle, said: “Please accept my apologies for the lack of notification in regards to this activity – we aim to be a good neighbour and pre-warn communities of such noisy activity.”
The rail company said that the work could only be done outside of train travel time and that pile driving – the cause of the noise – was necessary to install new gantries. Residents have been told that the usual installation process was to place the gantries on concrete platforms, but workers have had to resort to piling due to flooding on one side of the line making it impossible to control the water in the excavations.
But Ms Nicholas said: “It’s not good enough – we should be told what times the pile driving will be taking place. “We understand it has to be done outside of travel time but why can’t they do the most noisy work between 10pm and midnight, rather than keeping everyone up all night.”
Another Helmside Road resident, Ellis Butcher, said: “Network Rail has failed spectacularly with its community relations and have undermined any respect we had for them. “People in Oxenholme love living next to a railway but surely the first rule of being a good neighbour is you don’t wake next door up at 3am on a Sunday. And certainly not two weekends in a row.”
Westmorland Gazette,