It’s always a pleasure to receive news of old ‘Bonkers’ – particularly someone who has achieved outstanding success in the ‘outside world’ and yet still remembers his roots with pride. And no-one fits that description more than Tony Read from ‘The Lot’. A world renown author, Tony has just had his eleventh non-fiction book ‘The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism’ published and it has received a lot of favourable attention here and in the States. After writing over 200 scripts Tony has now fully retired from television but he is starting a new career as a children’s author with a series of novels called ‘The Baker Street Boys’ based on Tony’s own TV series in the 1980s.

One other bit of family news from Tony is that his only surviving uncle, Stan Pratt, now aged 84, is living in a nursing home in Germany to be near his daughter Sandra, but not in the best of health.

Activities throughout the last three months have included a fascinating talk from Mr Fred Pritchard at the Anglesey Lodge, where we were able to view and handle his extensive collection of antique guns and weapons, many dating back to Waterloo, a battle in which the Marquis of Anglesey was heavily involved.

With our Schools Programme, successful presentations were given to the local schools, as well as one to Gorsemoor Primary on various topics from Victoriana, World War II and the Old Industries of Cheslyn Hay plus a couple of walks around the village.

We have received some acknowledgements in the local papers with regards to the story about George Follows, the Daily Herald journalist and a Cheslyn Hay man, who was killed in the tragic Munich Air Disaster of 1957. This then led to an unexpected appearance on the BBC Midlands News to promote our Society.

Our number one priority this year is our involvement with the Chase Mining Museum in the cataloguing of all the Hawkins’ records and archival material from the T A Hawkins Colliery, the Tileries and the Brickworks. It is an absorbing and worthwhile project that will take most of this year to catalogue the 22 boxes. The professional way to catalogue the letters and reports is to take a completely disinterested overview of all the items and not to read them – which of course is impossible! A small snippet of information though – can you believe that it was quite common for Hawkins’ Brickworks to produce over one million bricks in a month as shown in the output figures in the 1930s!

Whilst on the subject of the Hawkins’ family, Leslie Hawkins’ daughter, Mrs Patricia Henshaw-Fack informs me that she has now completed her life story and is looking for a publisher. We will, of course, be stocking the book for any interested parties.

Finally, now that we are ready to issue our Programme of Events for the forthcoming year, we are faced with a problem. We have booked the popular speaker, Mr Peter Rhodes of the Express & Star, to talk to us on Thursday afternoon, 31st July at 2pm and unfortunately we are unlikely to be able to accommodate everyone in the Schoolroom. Therefore we are giving our members priority to buy reserved tickets in advance at £1 (2 per Single Member, 4 per Family Member) and these will be available at the AGM.

Trevor McFarlane

SALEM MIRACLE

At our January Coffee morning one of our members was so absorbed that he left behind his walking stick. When phoning Mrs Pat Allen, the Missions Secretary she calmly observed that another miracle had been witnessed at the Salem.

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