Mountfield

Peter and Valerie Miles, [email protected]

Last week’s Battle Observer had a nice photo of Fred Stace with the darts trophy — page 12 in case you missed it. This week, we move the spotlight from mere youngsters like Fred to offer congratulations to Mountfield’s oldest resident, Margaret Perring, who recently celebrated her 109th birthday. She spent the day surrounded by family but, of course, the high point was the arrival of postie Dave Wadeson with all the cards and messages from the great and the good. Congratulations!

We did raise this a few weeks back without any response. We still urgently need some help with delivering The Messenger round the village. Pete currently collects the magazines, drop them off to the various deliverers and then does a large sprawling ‘paper round’. As the numbers have increased, finding time to deliver this many is not always easy which results in late delivery. Is there anyone who is prepared to help out by sharing even a small part of the task. If so, please give us a call to talk it over.

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It has got to crunch time with the idea of having a village fête this year. Right now, to put it bluntly, there isn’t quite enough support from people prepared to lend a hand in advance of the day. To that end, there is going to be an important meeting on Tuesday, March 18, at 7.30 pm in the Village Hall. If you can volunteer some help ahead of the actual day, please either go to the meeting, email [email protected], or call Caroline on 880056 or Neil on 881874. Everyone who went to the last fête in 2012 had such a good time and it raised such an amazing amount — over two grand! So if you would be prepared to run a stall or an event, or handle some part of the organisation, now is the time to put your hand up or at least talk to Caroline or Neil about it.

There was an interesting post this week on the parish website (mountfield.org.uk) which we reproduce here. Bill Ashby is part of the team which manages the British Resistance Archive (BRA)which is dedicated to researching the history of the British Resistance Movement (Auxiliary Units) during WWII. Bill’s email reads:

“I belong to a group researching Auxiliary Units, the secret British Resistance Organisation set up in 1940 to resist the German invaders had they landed. Small groups of six to eight men, armed with all manner of weapons and explosives were to go to ground in specially prepared underground bases. There were 28 such groups (patrols) in Sussex, one of which was sited near Mountfield.

“Is there a local historian you could put me in touch with who might know about the Mountfield Patrol and be able to help us with our research?

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“The only information I have are the names and addresses of two members: R.L. Godsell, enrolled 28/06/40, born 15/05/09, Hoath Hill and T. Godsell, enrolled 29/06/40, born 23/08/02, Mountfield House. Does Mountfield House still exist and are there any Godsells still living in the village? Any help appreciated, thank you.”

BRA has a fascinating website (www.coleshillhouse.com) for anyone interested. Irene Marchant has already put Bill in touch with Trish so if anyone thinks they can help, you could also contact Trish. Pete has a strong interest in home front defences and would love to hear from anyone who knows anything about the Mountfield bunker.

The situation with the trains seems to be improving as a rail service is now operating between Robertsbridge and London, but it is still difficult for Battle and Hastings passengers who have connect to Robertsbridge by coach and bus. The station car park is full and the surrounding streets are heavily parked. And throughout, for every step forward on the engineering front, South Eastern seem to manage to engineer one step backwards. The latest wheeze is to “lose” either the driver or the guard so that the train cannot go anywhere; in recent days they have lost two of each though in the most recent case, they apparently hadn’t lost the guard: he or she had been “misplaced”. We should be grateful that South Eastern don’t own any breweries as we know at least one thing they’d struggle to organise.

The Mountfield Club hosted an open darts tournament last Saturday night with new member Wayne Martin beating club champion Alex Gray in the 3-2 final. In the semi-finals, Wayne beat Glen Gurden 3-1 and Alex Gray came from 2-0 down to beat Sue Baker 3-2 in an epic semi-final. The club would like to thank Bruce Sargent and hopes to hold another tournament soon.

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The Club’s snooker team has set a new club record by winning 5 consecutive league matches with a impressive 3-2 home win against Battle C. The winning streak seemed in trouble when the away team took a 2-0 win but Mountfield fought back with frame wins for Kevin Gray, Steve Smith and Alex Gray. The Club would like to thank Bill Scott for repairing the snooker hook on the table.

In the Club’s snooker championship, Steve Smith, Pete Last, Kevin Gray and Sean Spillet are all through to the last eight with the other group matches due to be played this week.

The Club’s darts pairs and shove tournaments will be played on Saturday, March 29 with a £1.00 entry fee for all players. A date for the Club’s first table tennis tournament will be given soon. For more information please call Steve Smith on 07720 298971.

There is still no news on the Southern Water application so we’re beginning to think that ESCC have demanded extra information. We may get a clearer idea at the parish council meeting which we will report on next week.

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It only took a few warm days recently and there were the first wood anemones (Anemone nemorosa) smiling up at us as we walked the dogs. Anemones are interesting little flowers. They are very pretty on a sunny spring day but if you take them indoors, the flowers close up tight for lack of un. And they rarely produce fertile seeds in this country; instead, they spread by their roots. This spread is very slow: only about six feet every century, so when you see a carpet of anemones, it’s a sure sign that it is ancient woodland.

You know where we are: 880614 (evenings) or [email protected].

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