Fletching

CHROMATICS CHOIR: Meets on Monday at 7pm.

FLETCHING SINGERS: Rehearse on Tuesday at 7.45pm.

MARTIAL ARTS: Kobudo Martial Arts meet on Thursday at 5pm.

CHRISTMAS CONCERT: The Fletching Singers Christmas Concert will be on Saturday December 8, at 7.30pm. We have a wonderful, varied, programme, which features seasonal classical pieces plus some Christmas carols and includes What Sweeter Music (Rutter), O Magnum Mysterium (Lauridsen), Fantasia on Christmas Carols (Vaughan Williams), In Terra Pax (Finzi). It will be held in the candlelit Fletching Church and followed, as is our tradition, with wine and mince pies. Tickets are available from 01825 712462, from ticketsource or on the door.

CHRISTMAS DINNER: Piltdown Residents Association Christmas Dinner and Quiz, Saturday December 8 at The Lamb, Piltdown 7.15pm to 11.30pm Back by popular demand the Peter and Keith Fun Quiz. Tickets £27.50 pp including a three course meal. Email [email protected] for booking form and menu choices.

100 YEARS AGO: Sussex Express 22 November 1918. New Discovery at Piltdown. Beads Make Socks. Not a fairy transformation, but the result of wonderful genius and patience! Three hundred pairs of socks sent to the soldiers through making beads! Do not think of an ordinary string such as one sees every day, but rather picture to yourselves a kind of Armanian bazaar with string upon string of hanging beads, in which bright Oriental colours, fantastic shapes, and varied designs are wonderfully combined. This is the ‘Sock-producing workshop’ of the soldiers’ unknown friend at Piltdown. Hour upon hour she sits deftly manipulating the little clay shapes to be transformed and worked into the various designs of her invention. Her own inventions they certainly are, and yet, looking at some of them, one is so irresistibly reminded of ancient works of that kind, that it would almost seem as though a pre-existence among the Etruscans or the early Egyptians had taught her the art. As has been the case with many other people, this War has brought to light this hitherto unknown talent and the work of making and selling beads in order to buy socks for the soldiers is surely one that demands praise and admiration. Many readers are probably already acquainted with it, and beads are in request all over the country.

The little hamlet of Piltdown has become famous for the discovery of the primitive woman’s skull, and a Piltdown woman of today has thus added another item of interest for those who visit this remote corner of Sussex.