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LADIES GROUP
July meeting
June welcomed those attending and opened with a prayer. She asked those present to pray for those members who are not well and told us that she had received a letter of thanks for flowers from Ann Harding. We all said The Grace together.
June then introduced Natalie Cumming to talk about her book The Fiddle (ISBN 9781912639083) written to keep alive memories of her Aunt and the fiddle.
The fiddle itself was bought in Dresden in 1883 and the book is a true story, tracing a precious violin across landscapes devastated by war and terror, to safety and restoration in 21st century Britain in 2018 on BBC’s The Repair Shop.
Abraham and his family flee the Bolsheviks, from St. Petersburg to Odessa and safety in the UK. Abraham’s skill on the violin earns them food and lodgings, as they struggle through the freezing Russian winter. The violin then passes to Rosa, Abraham’s daughter, violinist with the famous Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Arrested by the Nazis on Kristellnacht 1938 she is sent to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, and then to Auschwitz, where her musical talent sees her forced to join the Women’s Orchestra and saves her life. She spends the last 5 months of the war in Belsen, before testifying at the Nuremberg Trials, exposing the horrors of the Nazi death camps.
Rosa’s brother, Israel, inherits the violin. A celebrated musician, he joins ENSA during the war, entertaining the troops. Post war, he investigates Nazis trying to escape trial. He forms several popular bands, well-known throughout the ’60s and ’70s.
Finally, the violin comes to his daughter Natalie, who has written her family’s extraordinary story, lest the world should ever forget global events, against which the journey of this beautiful instrument is told. The fiddle is now on permanent loan to the Yehudi Menuhin School to individual students for their time there and to ensure that the instrument lives on for many more years.
Natalie told her story quietly and calmly and we were all deeply moved. She had brought copies of the book and many members bought a copy.
Ann Boulton
June meeting
 June, our chairman, opened our meeting with a special grace and then we all said The Grace together. We celebrated Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee by a bring-and-share afternoon tea. Well, we certainly did bring and we shared a delicious tea which included June’s delicious lemon posset. Some memorabilia was shown and Ann Boulton brought her Coronation Programme which had been bought a couple of months after the Coronation on a school visit to welcome Her Majesty and Prince Philip back from their World tour. She stood outside the Tower of London and watched the Royal Yacht come under Tower Bridge.
The Parish Centre was organised with tables of four and we all talked and talked and wondered where the time had gone. Such an enjoyable afternoon – thank you to June, Cynthia and the Committee for organising, arranging and providing tea and coffee with our goodies.
Our next meeting will be on Monday 4th July at 2.30 pm in the Parish Centre when Lady Natalie Cummings will be our speaker.
Ann Sagar
May meeting
June welcomed everyone to our meeting on Monday 9th May in the Parish Centre and led us in
prayer. We were pleased to welcome a new member Mrs. Joan Abbatt.
As our speaker was unable to be with us, Chris Abram, at very short notice, agreed to talk to us about the importance of recording our family histories and passing the information on to the younger generations.
Chris spoke about her passion for family history and how the seeds were sown at a very young age.
An only child until the age of 7, she spent a great deal of time with her paternal grandparents and was fascinated to learn about their family and of the large extended family on her maternal side - her mother was the youngest of twelve. Family stories of relationships to royalty and of a great uncle’s quest to prove that the family were the rightful heirs to a huge estate in South London in the 1920’s served to fuel her interest even more.
Once her own family were grown she and her brother turned to more serious research and soon found, as is often the case, that although these stories contained an element of truth, there was sadly no direct link to royalty and the prospect of a sizable inheritance was merely wishful thinking.
In fact, that family’s only proven claim to fame was that her 4 x great grandfather, had been the first Sunday School teacher to have taught at what was considered to be the first Sunday School, established in the late 1700’s at The Old Tabernacle in Dursley, Gloucestershire.
Chris was keen to encourage those members who hadn’t already done so, to pursue and record what they know about their own family history so as to leave their families and future generations with the greater sense of well-being which comes from knowing who you are and where you come from.
A member of Shropshire Family History Society for over 30 years Chris remains an enthusiastic
amateur family historian currently assisting others with their research and continuing the ambition of the Society to record all the memorial inscriptions in the county.
In the next few weeks you may well come across Chris and Anne Pilsbury on their hands and knees in our churchyard as they resume work on their task to record all the memorials that remain to be uncovered at St. Oswald’s and to add them to Ann Boulton’s comprehensive church inventory.
Everyone took part in Chris’ talk and it was greatly enjoyed by us all.
For our next meeting on 6th June at 2.30 p.m. it was agreed at our Annual General meeting that we organise a Jubilee Party in the Parish Centre. Could all members please bring a small plate of
goodies. June will provide the puddings!!
Ann Sagar
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