WW1 event in Wing

If you have an interest in Wing during WWI and are able to get to this event - do go! I won't make it, what with me being in NZ, but I'm sure it'll be an interesting afternoon.

A new vicar

I understand that Wing has a new vicar - welcome to Rev Helen Barnes! She is the first female vicar of Wing and I'm very excited to be able to add her to my list of clergy of All Saints.

Sportsmans Arms

Sportsmans Arms, Littleworth, on an overcast September day in 2013.

Pubs come and go and for a one-place studier this is always a little bit sad. No more Six Bells in the hamlet of Burcott, no more Dove in Wing itself, and soon, perhaps, no more Sportmans Arms in the hamlet of Littleworth. The pub has been up for sale for a while and now has planning permission for a house conversion should that prove a more attractive option for a potential buyer.

A quick roundup of Sportsmans Arms publicans from local directories and census records:

1887 Robert Davidson
1891 James Cane
1895 Pinfold
1899 Miss Mary Boyland
1901 - 1903 James Wyatt
1907 Edward Sinkler
1911 Edward Sinkler Huntsman (looks like a correction of the 1907 entry - Mr Huntsman committed suicide in 1911)
1924 Frank Wootton 
1928 Frederick Wootton
1931 Mrs Eliza Wootton
1935 Ernest J Pattendon

In 1871 22-year-old widow Elizabeth Sayell, licenced victualler, is living in Littleworth but the property isn't explicitly named as the Sportmans Arms. According to beer house records for 1872 held at the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies it definitely was the Sportsmans Arms though, and the licence for it was first granted in 1868.

In 1881 George Bandy and family were living at the Sportsmans Arms but he's recorded as an ag lab - there's evidently no resident publican.

I came, I saw, I photographed

Hi everyone! I'm back from my trip to the UK and more importantly my visit to Wing!

I'm going to try really really hard to finish a couple of outstanding projects (like the farms projects and the 1910 valuation books) and get those up on the website for you. You can also expect to see some things coming out of my visit – however those 735 photos I took in Wing (eeek) won’t transcribe and arrange themselves onto webpages all by themselves so that'll be happening gradually. However I am going to try to let go of that perfectionist streak and upload a little but often, rather than waiting for a particular research project to be completely finished.

Apologies to those of you I wasn't able to meet up with while in the area. I did manage to fit in a visit to Heather who showed me round her charming several-hundred-year-old house in Wing, complete with bowed floors and ceilings, and doors formerly installed in All Saints Church. One Wing resident I had previously corresponded with was Vic Sirett and I was very sorry to learn he had passed away earlier this year – farewell, Vic.

For those looking for accommodation in the Wing area I stayed at Ivy Cottage Annex, a self-contained converted building in Burcott. This meant I could walk throughout Wing so was perfect for my needs, and was in a lovely rural setting with a neighbouring listed building (Ivy Cottage) to boot! My hosts Siewlin and Ed’s daughter Fei Yen Ashton Waller is a talented artist who has sketched various buildings in Wing, and you can see an example of her work below. Another local accommodation option is Wingbury Courtyard Business Village B&B (formerly Upper Wingbury Farm), however this is further out from Wing towards Wingrave.

Houses off High Street Wing by Fei Yen Ashton Waller

Heading your way

In exactly two months I'll be in Wing. That's right, I'll be travelling the 18,416 kms to visit Wing again (amongst other things), staying the area for a couple of days in September. If you could ensure the weather is more hospitable for this visit - last time we spent a pleasant hour looking at gravestones at All Saints Church in the rain - that would be appreciated! I'm hoping to walk along every street, take plenty of photographs, and you'll maybe even see a photo of me in Wing if you're lucky.

Woodland for sale in Wing

Oh, how I wish I could buy this! It's a bit far for me to visit though. From the description it sounds like it is Fox Covert (or part of - I'm sure anyone with any concept of space/size could look at a map and work it out but alas I am not that person), part of the old ADAMS farm. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320754134984

War Memorial - restoration in progress

Maureen has kindly provided this photo taken just after you walk through the lychgate at All Saints Church, looking down the path towards the Wing War Memorial - now resplendent with scaffolding.

Memorial inscriptions

Do you have photos of any of the gravestones in Wing's churchyard? If so, please email them in to me so I can add them to the pages of memorial inscriptions. I understand that the passage of time and lack of care is causing the inevitable decay of the existing gravestones, and recording those memorials while they are still whole and readable is a lovely gift to pass on to future generations.

War Memorial restoration underway

Wonderful news from Wing - on Saturday the scaffolding will go up and work will commence on the repair of the War Memorial. Fundraising for this has been undertaken for several years and now this project can be brought to fruition.

Those Places Thursday - Wing Buckinghamshire

It's Thursday!

It occurs to me (somewhat belatedly) that you may have been eagerly anticipating my own contribution to Those Places Thursday. Sadly I haven't actually written one for the occasion. As always, you are welcome to peruse the main website at http://www.wing-ops.org.uk/ (this blog is a sideline, so if you have ancestors from Wing and haven't visited the main site, prepare to get excited!) - the pages in the Industries section and the Miscellany are probably the most informative and amusing if you don't actually have a connection to Wing.

You should also check out the page of photos of All Saints Church, because I have some news to report about it. Wing is a great example of how you can take a 10th century Saxon church and modernise it from time to time, and this time the roof is the centre of attention. Solar panels were recently installed as part of the Church of England's Shrinking The Footprint iniative. There's an article and nice photo of the panels here, and if you live anywhere nearby you should definitely head along to the seminar at the Church on Saturday 5 March to learn more about renewable energy options for churches.

I'm so proud - well done, Wing!

Milton Keynes Heritage Open Days

If you're in the Beds/Bucks area in early September, check out the Milton Keynes Heritage Open Days. There's a variety of events of interest to genealogists and historians, not just in Milton Keynes itself.

In Imaginary Land, where I have unlimited time and money to be there, you'll see me at:

* Reading Old Handwriting workshop
* Old Fashioned Games at Bradwell Windmill (in costume!)
* Bees, Hives and Honey with the North Bucks Beekeepers Association
* The Loneliest Church In Bucks - Tattenhoe Monument and Howe Park Wood

and probably many more - these things are easy to schedule in Imaginary Land!

Note that All Saints Church at Wing is participating in the Historic Churches Ride & Stride event. This is a sponsored event to raise funds for the Historic Churches Trust and the church of your choice - All Saints, perhaps?

Google Street View

I just made an exciting discovery - the Google Street View cameras have now been round Wing, and on a sunny day, no less!

If you happen to be a current resident, I'm not really cyber-stalking you, honestly - I'm just admiring the buildings.

All Saints Church in the snow

You may have noticed I get a little over-excited when it snows in England, and start pining for photos of Wing in the snow. I was just browsing Flickr and came across a lovely treat - a couple of photos of All Saints Church, taken right before Christmas last year. Thanks to Ian A Wood for posting these to Flicker.

All Saints Church - so pretty, and at full size I can even make out a CUTLER gravestone (can't see the details beyond that though).

War Memorial

Wing War Memorial

Excellent news from modern-day Wing this week. The repair work to the War Memorial is about to begin! If you are in the area, do pop in to All Saints Church - Vic Sirett has put together a display about the men on the memorial.

Making history

Will this be tomorrow's history?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DlquolSKWY

For those of you not familiar with Wing at all, at 34 seconds young Postman George wanders past the lychgate of All Saints Church, then heads up Church Street towards High Street.

(for those of you more familiar with Wing than me - any other spots of particular note in this short video?)

Behind the scenes

I haven't done much on the genealogical front in the last week or so. I should be busily working through DearMyrtle's February checklist, in particular crosschecking between the hard-copy information in my newly sorted ringbinders against the electronic information in my PAF file, but instead I've been busy making tomato sauce and pasta sauce with my tomato harvest, and........

I've finally gone ahead and purchased the latest upgrade to Adobe Lightroom, the program I use to process digital photos, so I've been getting distracted with that! I shoot in RAW, which means that less processing is controlled by the camera - one good thing about this is that as more sophisticated software is released you are able to go back and reprocess your photos to get a subtly better result. This is particularly handy when they are travel photos from the other side of the world and you don't have a chance to retake them.

Unfortunately a rubbish photo is still a rubbish photo. While I've been trying to tinker with the photos I took when visiting Wing in 2005, running around in the rain on a tight schedule, they're still not up to scratch - right now I have a slightly displeased expression on my face, somewhat like this cherub on a fountain at Ascott House:

Memorial inscriptions

At the moment I'm gathering together the photos I took of the gravestones for my own family surnames when I visited Wing in 2005. These will be going online along with a transcription of the inscription itself (as these may be a little hard to read once the size and resolution of the photo has been adjusted for the web).

If you have photos (or even just notes of the inscription) of gravestones or memorials at All Saints Church, please do email them to me, and I can then set up a page for that surname. The larger the size and resolution, the easier it will be for me to manipulate behind the scenes to read particular words, so email them along as is without any processing and I'll do all the tweaking at my end.

The photographer or provider will of course be credited on each photo.

And if anyone living in the immediate area would like to pop by the churchyard and take a look at a couple of gravestones where my photos are unfortunately obscured by leaves and the like, please email me and I'll give you the details.

Wing War Memorial

I received some excellent news today. The renovations to the Wing War Memorial are about to begin. I know those of you that have visited All Saints Church and seen the memorial in the churchyard in recent years have been saddened by the damage time has done to it, and will be happy to see it restored. (If you would like to contribute some funds toward this, please let me know and I can put you in touch with the appropriate people).

In other news, I now have the December 2008 issue of Family Tree Magazine, which mentioned the Wing One Place Study in its article about researching in Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire - thanks, Family Tree Magazine! The entire issue was full of interesting articles so I do recommend that you pick up a copy.

Photo pages update

I haven't added any new photos, but the three pages that consist primarily of photos of modern-day Wing (Photos 2005, All Saints Church 2005, and the Wing War Memorial) have now been converted so they look the same as the rest of the website.

Wing War Memorial Restoration Fund

Those of you who have been fortunate enough to visit Wing in recent years will be aware that the War Memorial is not in the best condition. Restoring it before the damage cannot be undone is a specialist and costly exercise.

A Wing resident, Mark Woolhead, will be cycling a stage of the Amstel Gold Tour in Holland next weekend to raise funds for this. Visit the Wing Village website, head to the Notice Board then click on the link to learn more. And please contribute a donation!

(If there's anyone in NZ wanting to donate but with logistical difficulties in providing UK funds, please email me - I'll be organising a UK cheque to send over to them and am happy to add your own donation in with mine)