Rumours that a private firm is offering £600,000 for St James’ flagship community building, the Riverside Centre, have dismayed the local community.
The Centre’s owners, the Royal Voluntary Service (RVS), have been accused of running Riverside down and ignoring community wishes for its future. If Riverside is sold to the private sector, the RVS will benefit from what they describe as the “£1m refurbishment” in public funds, which was spent on converting the former parish vicarage into a state-of-the-art community centre.
The parish lost its original community centre, the parish hall off Eign Road, in the early 1990s, when it was sold for development by St James Church. In 2000 the RVS launched an ambitious plan to provide a purpose-built focus for adult and community learning. Herefordshire Primary Care Trust, Herefordshire Council Social Services and Bartonsham and St James' Community Association all played their part in the visionary new plan.
In 2005 RVS reported the completion of their “£1 million refurbishment of the former Vicarage as our Riverside Community Learning Centre, part-funded by the local Learning and Skills Council. New facilities include a community café, meeting rooms and day-care services.”
Now that’s all gone and the building stands empty and forlorn and rumours that the RVS are keen on selling to a private sector firm have angered residents.
The RVS website continues to advertise the Riverside Centre opening hours, but don’t try their telephone number - unless you’ve got upwards of £600,000 to spend.
 
Find out more about the history of the old Vicarage building.

We are inviting support for a transition to socially regenerative and ecologically focused land-management at Bartonsham Farm. In the last few months we have set up a Friends of Bartonsham Meadows group which you can check out here www.friendsofbartonshammeadows.org. Our primary objectives are to promote environmental and social welfare benefits through the restoration of these historically important flood-plain meadows to environmentally sustainable management.

We have opened a dialogue with the land-owners and managers about their plans for the land and asked to be involved in discussions they are currently holding. We are cautiously optimistic about these communications. We have received much appreciated support from key expert organisations - such as the Bartonsham and St James Community Association, the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, and the Bartonsham History Group who have produced a fabulous history of the meadows.

This Friends Group is a focal point for contributing to important discussions on ecology, biodiversity, natural flood-defences, local social engagement and social regeneration opportunities. All of this has a place in the wider debates around climate change and active social engagement in our communities.

Whilst we have quickly made promising progress we have few resources to support our big vision. Please help us.

• Donate to support our activities. Make cheques payable to St. James' and Bartonsham Community Association, noting ‘Friends of Bartonsham Meadows’ on the back. Please post to 19 Nelson Street, Hereford HR1 2NZ.
• Join local ward councillor Jeremy Milln for a litter pick of the meadows and Row Ditch on Sunday 6 September 2pm. Meet at the green Street end of Row Ditch. For more information contact [email protected].
• Sign-up to support our objectives and receive our newsletter http://www.friendsofbartonshammeadows.org/?page_id=147.
• Get in touch to volunteer your time and share your views [email protected].

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All the best
Ruth and the Working Group Team
www.friendsofbartonshammeadows.org

The City and County Photographic Company studio at Bartonsham, writes Peter Klein who has been collecting Hereford carts-de-visite for some time, is a new one on me.  Examples are certainly rare, so the studio is likely to have been trading for only a brief period.  The style and finish of the printed mount is fairly precisely datable - probably during the period 1866 to 1874 - and the studio was perhaps based in a private house.  The site of the present corner shop on the corner of  Harold Street and Green Street was still shown as undeveloped in 1884, in the 1888 edition of the OS 25 inch map, so I was wondering where other commercial shop premises might have been situated in around 1870.  I can find no mention of the company in the local trade directories, and I've drawn a blank there.  As this studio probably didn't do very well and folded within a year or two, what few sitters did come to have their portraits taken are likely to have been very local to the Bartonsham area.
Closer examination of the 1871 Census might show something, for instance there was a 28-year-old "photographic artist", Thomas A. Williams, living with his parents at Barrack Villa, 41 Harold Street (schedule no. 118), so he might be the photographer.  He was still there in 1881.

This picture - Credit: Ron Cosens

Happy Christmas and Best Wishes for the New Year from Bartonsham History Group. Please see our new events for the start of 2018.

Email [email protected] if you can help identify our lady skittlers in the photo below:

An urgent message from Mike  Booth who is leading on the building of the labyrinth on the Bishops Meadows. The email address to contact him on is [email protected]

Dear Supporters
Well, we’ve raised the money (thank you) and the Council have granted us a Licence (thank you).  Its now up to us!
The Contractors are starting work tomorrow (Monday), preparing the ground for us to Lay the Labyrinth this coming weekend (30th and Oct 1st).
Are you free this weekend?
Would you like to help? Or do you know someone who would?
The work will be mainly trundling wheelbarrows around with small amounts of soil or gravel to fill in the pattern of the Labyrinth.
If you can help, please reply to this email and let me know:
1.  How many of you? 2.  Can you bring a wheelbarrow and/or a spade/shovel? 3.  Which days or parts of days you can manage?
We will start at 10.00 on the Saturday and the Sunday.  Lunch break 1.00 - 2.00. Toilets and refreshments will be available at the Leisure Pool or the Tennis Kiosk.
Looking forward to hearing from you and thank you for helping with this unique project for the people of Herefordshire.
Mike Booth The South Wye Development Trust.
More information herefordlabyrinth.co.uk

Ian Broom has given an interview to the Hereford Times giving the results of the Row Ditch excavation.

Click on the photo below to go to the article.

Ian Broom has provided an update on the Row Ditch Excavations, this was as at the end of Thursday 7/9/2017:

The first part of the dig is coming to an end tomorrow, after a week of constantly changing ideas &  interpretations.
More challenging & difficult to understand than anticipated, the feature is now stating to make a bit more sense.
Although the excavations are concluding & the trenches will be backfilled early next week, further work using augering will continue.
Tim has kindly offered to hold a brief open session at the site on Saturday morning (9/9) at 10am, for half an hour or so, to explain what has been found so far.

As a result of exhaustive research in a range of records, and from knowledge built up over the years of living in Foley Street, Win Morgan-Brewer gives a thorough history of each house in the street in terms of when it was built, who was living there at any one time and their occupations.

A picture emerges of a number of families settled in the street for the long term – 110 years and counting in one case – and of a number of lodgers, often taken in to help cover bills, who pass through. Many interesting themes emerge – the number of residents who worked on the railways or in the tile industry; how many families adopted children; the widespread place of birth across the British Isles of those who lived in the street at any one time; the age at which many of the boys, especially, began working.

In addition, a chronological list of events that have shaped Hereford is provided, giving some interesting details about life and times in the city as a whole.

Win Morgan-Brewer came to live in Foley Street in 1977 and by the early 1980s she had started researching the family history of both her paternal and maternal relatives. In 2007, with retirement not too far away, she decided to start writing, which resulted in published articles in newspapers and magazines. Around 2010 she started to delve into the history of her house and the people who occupied it, research which snowballed into this history of Foley Street.
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Paperback, 160 pages, over 25 colour and 120 black and white illustrations, mainly photographs ISBN 978-1-910839-14-0 Price £10

A mysterious earthwork running along Bartonsham Meadows is to be investigated thanks to a £10,000 Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant. A group of local enthusiasts formed the Bartonsham Row Ditch Community Archaeology Project with the support of Historic England and Hereford City Council & now, thanks to National Lottery players, the Project will oversee the first ever scientific investigation into the distinctive, but enigmatic, earthwork called the Row Ditch. 
 
Formerly a high bank and deep ditch situated in Bartonsham Meadows, to the south-east of Hereford city centre, the remains of the earthwork, a scheduled ancient monument, can still be traced at the back of Park Street. Currently on Historic England's “At Risk Register”, due to neglect and farming activity, it is marked on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1888 as an “Intrenchment Constructed by the Scotch Army AD1645”, but other evidence suggests the Row Ditch has a much older history.
 
The Project's chair, Ian Broom said: “The grant will help us understand the purpose and origins of the feature. We will be working with the community and involving young people from St James' CofE Primary School and Hereford Sixth Form College, to develop a better understanding of the feature in the history of the environs of Hereford's medieval city. Bartonsham Meadows is an area popular with local residents and many have speculated on the origin of the Row Ditch. Is it a Civil War defence? A flood drain? A part of Offa's Dyke? A feature of a medieval field management system, or something else? We are very pleased to have been awarded this grant and our thanks go to those who made it possible by participating in the National Lottery.”
 
Herefordshire Archaeology, part of Herefordshire Council, has been appointed to provide management expertise and leadership in meeting the Project's objectives. Archaeologist Tim Hoverd said; “This is fantastic news! We are really looking forward to working with the local community to hopefully solve the mystery of Row Ditch. We hope that the excavations will be able to tell us exactly what this monument was used for and when it was being used.”  
 
Local people will be given the opportunity to experience and participate in a professionally managed investigation within the community. Building on preliminary work already conducted, the project will include the digging of surface trenches, deeper augering and analysis of the results. At the end of the project, a report will be published and an interpretation board installed on site for the information of visitors and residents to raise awareness and appreciation of the area.
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Vanessa Harbar, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund West Midlands, said: “Sharing Heritage is a wonderful opportunity for communities to delve into their local heritage and we are delighted to be able to offer this grant so that The Bartonsham Row Ditch Community Archaeology Project can embark on a real journey of discovery. Heritage means such different things to different people, and HLF’s funding offers a wealth of opportunities for groups to explore and celebrate what’s important to them in their area.”

You may already know that The Friends of Castle Green is delighted to have been awarded a grant by The Big Lottery Fund Awards for All to carry out a year long city-wide consultation process to determine the future of Castle Green and the surrounding area.
 
The Friends would like to invite members of the History Group and a friend to a World Cafe Event to have their say on 'Planning the Future: Castle Green in the 21st Century'. They hope to bring together a good cross section of people to facilitate a discussion on what people want to happen to the area and how we go about achieving these objectives.

There will be a series of events throughout the year, and there are currently spaces on the evenings of 8th March and 22nd March. The evening will begin at 7.30pm at The Pavilion on Castle Green with food provided, but please bring your own drinks.

The Friends are limited on numbers so if interested you need to RSVP using the attached form as soon as possible and no later than 24th February. The only stipulation is an open mind and plenty of ideas!

For more information contact: - 

Katie Bott
Operations Manager
Friends of Castle Green
07939 261640
[email protected]