Latest Newsletter: August 2024

You can find our latest newsletter here.

New Book – Grayshott’s Village People

Our new book will be available to members from Monday 15th December. Print copies can be collected from Business Connections and the Community Library and, as usual, they are free. The production costs have been covered by a grant from East Hampshire District Council and earnings from the talks we give to Moorlands Lodge. The official publication date is 25th December, 2025, to tie in with our 25th birthday theme, but we’re making copies available a little bit early so we don’t have to add an additional burden to Santa’s sleigh.

A PDF copy is available here.

It will go on general release to the public on Friday 19th December, so members have just a few days to get ahead of the rush. From that point it should be in all the regular village outlets in addition to Business Connections and the Library – Pottery, Post Office, Village Hall, Red Rose, Co-Op etc.

Wartime Memories Project – The Sequel!

Our book ‘Grayshott’s Wartime Memories’  was released on 15th August, the 80th anniversary of VJ Day. Thanks to generous grants from East Hants District Council and Hampshire Archives Trust they are, like our other books, free. We’ve had plenty printed but be sure to get yours promptly – they are going fast and already in short supply. You can also download a pdf copy here.

The reaction has been very positive. In fact, so many people have started telling us even more of their family wartime stories that we’ve decided to produce a sequel in 2026. These memories are becoming fragile and we need to record them before they disappear. This time we’ll expand the scope to include WW1 and the immediate post-WW2 turbulence, up to the onset of National Service in 1949.

If you would like to have your family stories included please get in touch here. They don’t have to be set in Grayshott, just so long as there is some connection to the village or its immediate surroundings now, then or in-between. We already have villagers’ stories of an extra-ordinary escape from the Japanese invasion of Burma, bathing verminous evacuees in sheep dip in Cheshire and a confiscated Christmas pudding in Mesopotamia. So don’t be shy – tell us yours. (We are particularly keen to trace the gentleman who visited our stand in August and told us about his father, a ‘Z-Man’.)

MidSummer Afternoon, 24th June 2025

Our 2025 Midsummer Afternoon Tea was once again held at Waverley Hall, very kindly hosted by Sarah and Robert. As usual the weather was perfect, neither too hot nor too brisk.

This year was a super-special event to celebrate our 25th birthday. Richard began the proceedings with a brief welcome and a talk on how Grayshott Heritage has evolved since its inception as Grayshott Village Archive in year 2000. Sarah, a wine expert and educator as well as a baker, gave an entertaining and informative presentation on the English sparkling wine from a vineyard near Alresford owned by Louis Pommery. A tasting followed, then a sumptuous afternoon tea, including the celebratory chocolate cake.

Sarah Rowland’s book is called ‘The Periodic Table of Wine’ and can still be sourced from various bookselling websites. We send a huge thank you to Sarah and Robert for being such generous hosts.

Next year’s event is already confirmed for Tuesday 16th June. So if you’re planning a wedding, holiday, house move, funeral etc on that day you now have plenty of time to re-arrange it, no excuses. The venue is still to be finalised but promises to be equally special.

Friends’ Evenings

The last Friends’ Evening was on 14th October, with a good house of about 45 people.
John and Richard presented a slide show of ‘25 years Now and Then’, a year-by-year run through of notable village events from 2000 to 2025 and the corresponding period a hundred years earlier, 1900 to 1925.
Light refreshments were provided by the Grayshott Heritage Catering Corps, to whom as always we extend our grateful thanks.

Our dates for 2026 are Tuesdays 12th May and 13th October, all arrangements as usual. We are hoping to have a guest speaker at each, and in May a fascinating ‘home movie’ of Grayshott Hall in the 1940s.

We’ll have our display tables out and we invite you to bring along anything from your own collections that you think may be of interest – local and general history, crafts, art projects, old family albums, cakes etc

If anyone has suggestions for future evenings, or how we can improve things, please get in touch through the Contact page.

Village Transport Book!

Our book ‘Grayshott’s Journey – A History of Village Transport’ was launched at the October 2024 Friends’ Evening. It’s a look at how various forms of transport – horses, bikes, cars, vans, lorries – have connected with the village’s social and economic history. It’s been financed by a grant from East Hampshire District Council and earnings from our monthly talks to Moorlands Lodge, which means we can make it available to you at no cost. Copies are available at various outlets around the village including Business Connections and the Community Library, as well as an online copy on this website for more distant readers. They’re nearly all gone so make sure you collect yours soon.

The pdf copy is available here.

Early reviews have been encouraging:
‘Less boring than I was expecting ‘ – Archivist Martin

Headley Society Programme

The Headley Society have sent us their programme for the 2024/25 period. You can find it here.
Their talks are always interesting, and their annual sub of £10 covering 12 talks is great value. Or you can attend individual talks as a guest for £2. The venue is the Church Centre in Headley, which is directly opposite the church and has its own car park. Doors open at 7:30 for an 8pm start.

2024 AGM Report

Our 2024 AGM was held online on Tuesday 5th November. 35 people voted, and all of the minutes and reports were approved. The committee members were also all re-confirmed in post. The main change is that Richard and John have swapped posts. John is now Chairman and Richard is Vice Chairman.

We are in good shape financially, and members and the wider community seem to like what we do, so we’ll keep on doing it. Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond.

Moorlands Lodge Classic Car Show, July 2025

Every month, more or less, we give a talk to the residents at Moorlands Lodge. In July, for a change, we take along a selection of older or interesting cars, to make a mini motoring festival. The residents look around the cars, speak to the owners and generally we all have a nice hour outdoors. This year we had eight cars on show, three vintage Austins, an Invicta, a Mercedes, two Ferraris and a Belsize van. One of our ladies modelled her Edwardian costume, to blend in . If you have something suitable that you’d like to display please get in touch. It doesn’t have to be old or valuable, just a bit out of the ordinary by today’s standards.

Boundary Walk Booklets

We have now finished the series of Boundary Walks, produced in conjunction with the Grayshott Green Spaces group.

The first walk, Kingswood and Stoney Bottom, is available in pdf form, to download or print yourself, here.

The second walk, the Medieval Hamlet, is available in pdf here.

Our third walk, Flat Wood and the Southwater, has a pdf copy is here.

Walk 4, The Hanger and Whitmore, is here.

Finally, Walk 5, Architecture, Trade and Prosperity, is here. This walk concentrates on the village centre, especially upon its development as a service centre for the tourism industry in the decades around 1900. It’s packed with period photos and adverts, which give a fascinating taste of our village’s life and trade at that time. The walk itself is quite short and easy, only about a mile and all on footpaths.

The booklets are also available in pdf form on Grayshott Parish Council website here.

All are now almost out of stock in print form. You might, if you are very lucky indeed, find a rare copy lingering in the Community Library or Business Connections. If you draw a blank and absolutely must have a copy to complete your collection then contact us and we’ll have a rummage down the back of the sofa. There may be a stray, cat-chewed example hiding somewhere.We couldn’t have done this project without generous grants and donations from Hidden Gardens of Grayshott, Party in Grayshott, Hampshire County Council and East Hampshire District Council. To all of these, we send our thanks, and also to Colin Thompson, Chairman of the Green Spaces Group, for championing the project at its start and throughout.

As a special bonus you can now also access a pdf copy of our Tree Walk booklet here.

Our booklet commemorating the 120th anniversary of the Fox and Pelican is still just about available. At the moment there might be a very few remaining copies in the pub, free of charge. Written by Richard Peskett, it describes how the pub came into existence and became an enduring part of village life. The official launch was conducted at the F&P on Thursday 19th December 2019, attended by an honorary guest in the form of George Bernard Shaw, and several Friends. If you can’t get your hands on a print copy then you can find a pdf version here.

New Finds – Additions to the Archive

We continue to acquire New Finds. Recently Tony McColl, a descendant of the Lyndon family of Windwhistle in Crossways Road, has given us some articles from the family chest. Dr Arnold Lyndon was the village’s first GP and his wife Charlotte was for many years the Parish Council Clerk. They were A-list figures in village society, involved in just about everything. The two most significant artefacts received so far are the visitor’s book from Windwhistle and the commemorative album presented to Dr Lyndon on his retirement. These are real treasures, the former containing beautiful watercolours of local views by the artist Juliet Williams. The rest of the collection from the McColl HQ in New Zealand has now been received and is currently being catalogued.

We send our thanks to those who donate to our archive or make their personal material available, the like of which we rely upon heavily to enrich our archive. Some items can’t easily be digitised and we’ll have to scratch our heads a bit to work out how to present them for you, perhaps put them on display at our Friends’ Evenings. We do have a stack of New Finds awaiting publication, which we’ll try to catch up with. Take a look at the New Finds page to see the latest feature and the full back-series.

Some New Articles

Residents of Grayshott may have seen our series of articles in Grayshott Today magazine. For those further afield, we have put them onto our website on a new page called Grayshott Through the Ages. You will also find some of them on the Do You Know page.

Latest Loss – The Golden Hind

The latest building to succumb is the Golden Hind Cafe at Hindhead, more recently known as Cooper Brothers furniture shop. Time and decades of pounding from recent traffic had taken its toll, and the building was sadly beyond economic repair. It was demolished in May 2018