Bisham Life

The online newsletter for Bisham Parish for March and April 2021

By the time you read this, many of you will have had your vaccinations, and we will be in the process of coming out of lockdown and other restrictions (I’m trying to be optimistic!). Also, with the flush of Spring, new life will be breaking-out all around with flowers blooming, leaves unfolding, and new-born lambs in the fields.

We will also be celebrating Easter and Jesus’ resurrection as he broke out of the tomb, emerging into the world, bringing new life. I wonder if this is a helpful image for us as we go through the process of re-emerging from lockdown.  There probably won’t be one identifiable day when we can say the crisis is over and the virus defeated, compared to Jesus’ splitting open the tomb on Easter Sunday. But we might feel like we are coming out of the isolation and darkness; emerging into the light and freedom of being alive.

Jesus experienced different reactions to his resurrection: some were scared, others triumphant; some ran away, others hugged him close; some shouted the news that he was alive; others couldn’t believe it was true.  I am sure it will be the same as we come out of COVID restrictions, people need to process what has happened and will react differently and at different speeds. Some will want to hug everyone, others will need time to get used to being close to people again, some will want to party and celebrate, others will be mourning and remembering loved ones they have lost. We will need to be patient and listen to each other as we all readjust.  Many have celebrated the increase in community spirit during the crisis, so let’s commit to keeping that sense of community by looking out for our friends, family and neighbours and continue to support each other.

When Jesus came out of the tomb he was changed, resurrection was more than resuscitation. His body was transformed. It was still a real body – he could eat and touch, but it was also different – he could enter a locked room and appear in different places. This resurrected body bore the crucifixion scars but was full of new life.

Lockdown-easing may not result in such a dramatic transformation. Wounds of what we experienced will heal and, hopefully, make us stronger, but their scars will always mark us. We may be more robust by looking at our lives differently with a renewed awareness of environmental, social and racial justice issues.  Increased appreciation of community and relationships, how technology can be used for good, and may bring about a better balance in our lives.

We cannot to go back to where we were before March 2020. We have changed; things are different.  We will need to work out what that looks like in our family, work, church and community life. My prayer is that God can work things for the good and enable us to become a better society.  I hope too that we will be able to open up the church fully and, as well as worshipping together, our building will be used to offer hospitality to our community to meet together and share as we move forward together.

God bless and take care,

Sarah

It’s raining again and with over 100mm of rain recorded in January, it is no wonder that flood waters are appearing at Temple and no doubt other susceptible areas along the Thames valley. Our farmland is saturated and so any thoughts of any land work must be put on hold until the days are drier and indeed warmer. We have oats and field beans to sow, when conditions improve.  Where unaffected, our autumn sown crops of wheat and oilseed rape are looking well with the annual dreaded pigeon onslaught on the rape yet to begin.

In the hope that it might interest you, I would like to look back in time to when the Randall family with seven children were living at Woodside Farm, now known as Shepherds Standing, Pinkneys Green and my great great grandmother was the landlady of the Bull at Bisham and is buried in the churchyard.  Hyde Farm formed part of the Bisham Abbey Estate and tenanted to our family.  My father first came to Hyde Farm in the early 1930’s as a 17yr old teenager with a housekeeper living in the Lodge in its original ‘two up and two down’ mode.  His father charged him with running the 300 acre farm, including a 70 cow dairy herd with the further responsibility of retailing the milk produced to the Maidenhead area. This was achieved using ponies and milk floats (as illustrated). My parents were married in 1936 and with the advent of the 2nd World War, the farmhouse was used to house evacuees out of London. By 1946, three children had arrived and with the war over, we were pleased to move to the farmhouse.

The war effort demanded farmers to produce as much food as possible to feed the nation and so maximising our available acreage, we were rewarded with a bumper harvest in 1946.  The aerial photograph depicts twenty-one corn ricks, made up of sheaves of wheat, oats and barley.  The ricks were all thatched to protect the grain from the elements and crowned with a corn dolly and were strategically placed to accommodate a threshing machine between each pair of ricks.  We were unaware of the photograph until two years later, it appeared in the Farmers Weekly magazine and so were able to trace its origins.  In fact, with the advent of the common use of the combine harvester, our 1946 harvest ricks were never going to be repeated again.

My grandfather bought Temple Farm in 1942, where a second dairy herd was established to augment the Hyde Farm production, for the expanding retail business.  This continued until 1956 when the operation required considerable capital expenditure, such as replacing the ponies and carts with motorised delivery vans and more modern dairy machinery.  It was then decided to give up retailing but just continue milk production for the wholesale market.  By 1973, the facilities at both farms restricted any individual expansion so we developed a new, modern set-up at Temple Farm to accommodate both herds, totalling 200 including followers as the youngstock are known. This decision released all the land at Hyde Farm to arable production.

I will continue to bring this up to date in a future edition of Bisham Life.

Alan Randall

Colin Lemmings is now officially the Flood Co-ordinator for Bisham parish.  He works alongside Jim Cooke, our Flood Warden.  Colin has been very much involved over the past few weeks during the flood Alerts, with extra input from Derek Oliver, who lives by the river, so he has seen each day how the river level has risen or fallen.  The Parish Council is grateful to both Colin and Derek for the updates and support they have been giving during the worrying few days when Bisham Brook was rising and gardens were flooding.

As many of you will already know, there was recently a fractured sewage pipe on the corner of the Bisham Abbey land in Temple Lane: The emergency work by Thames Water to repair the fracture necessarily badly damaged the roots of one of the line of fine beech trees, which sadly for safety reasons has had to be felled.  We have asked that Thames Water replace the tree with a fairly mature specimen.  The environment agency are investigating whether the fracture led to any pollution of Bisham Brook.   Remedial work to the brook, reported in an earlier edition of Bisham Life, has paused because of the Covid restrictions, but it will recommence when it is safe and appropriate to do so.  

The gate into the Orchard on the main road has now been repaired, as has the surface of the bridge into The Orchard.  The wire, which provided a safe walking surface in wet conditions, had become broken and unsafe, and has been replaced.

Many of you are aware of the local online survey of traffic speeds in Bisham Village which has attracted support from many people.  Speeding in the village is a problem that the Parish Council has wrestled with over many years, trying to think of a feasible way of reducing speeds.  The Parish Council has made contact with the Borough and we would support any good proposal that the Borough might suggest for reducing speeds; it is a difficult problem to solve, since the road through the village is the main A308 road from  from Maidenhead to Marlow.

During the current lockdown the playground remains open, but if you and your family do take children in to play, please be aware that you must be careful to maintain a safe distance from others, and do not go into the playground if it seems to be busy.

The Parish Council hopes that everyone is staying well and following the current restrictions and we all hope that as Spring approaches, we can look forward to better days.

Mandy Robson Brown

[editors note: there is more information on flood measures below]

The quality of the articles in the printable version of this edition presented me with a bit of a juggling act: not quite enough to add an extra 4 pages (1 extra page of printing); too many to fit in the usual 8 pages.

In the end, I removed the sodoku (still present in this online version), and my words of wisdom (cough, splutter) in this section are much shorter.  

It is March, so I have to mention St Cuthbert, whose feast day is March 20^th, as my home county town, Kirkudbright, is named after him.  He lived in interesting times when the celtic and roman christian traditions were often at odds.  He was present at the Synod of Whitby in 664 when the date of Easter was a “hot topic”.

St Cuthbert travelled far and wide spreading christianity to many a remote village in Scotland and Northern England.  He also seems to have travelled just as much after his death and that is what took him to Kirkcudbright — his coffin rested there after it was taken from Lindisfarne in order to escape the invading Danes who had their eyes on the relics of a prolific miracle performer.  From Kirkcudbright, his relics went to Chester-le-Street.

Stewart F-C, Editor and Church Warden

This document is also available as PDF