Website “Sunday Reflections”

The popular “Sunday Reflections” village website feature – a gentle observation of life in Hambledon when under the Spring and Summer Coronavirus “Lock-Down” – has reached a wider audience, thanks to local MP and village resident Jeremy Hunt.

Jeremy provides a twice-weekly email update to subscribers across his South West Surrey constituency and beyond, reaching into the heart of Westminster where he is chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee.

During the current pandemic his experience as a former Health Secretary and party leadership contender has been widely called upon, both by the media and by his Parliamentary colleagues.

He has kept in touch with Hambledon Parish Council and the village website and readily agreed to contribute a foreword when it was decided to produce a printed version of the Sunday Reflections to record for posterity how our community faced up to the challenges of the pandemic.

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Hambledon Parish Council Seeks to Co-Opt New Member

Applications are invited to fill a vacancy that has occurred on Hambledon Parish Council.

Mike Parry, a parish councillor since 2011, announced his retirement last month and the resulting vacancy was formally notified to the Electoral Services Department at Waverley Borough Council. It then published a notice of the vacancy and of a 14 working day period during which 10 or more parish electors could request that it be filled by holding an election.

No request was received when the deadline expired at the end of last week. As a consequence, the parish council can now co-opt a suitable candidate to fill what is called a “casual vacancy”.

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SUNDAY REFLECTION

Life is slowly getting back to something like “normal”. But we know that many things will have changed forever. There is, therefore, some comfort in reflecting on the past. In this week’s Reflection, Jane Woolley reminds us that our little village has a rich heritage. On this website, and within the Heritage archive that Jane keeps at her home, much can be discovered.

Ever wondered what your house used to look like?   The chances are that it was one of Hambledon’s many small cottages, probably with no modern utilities, before it was “developed” to create a fair-sized family home complete with wi-fi and superfast broadband.    Ever imagined what the noise must have been like when the empty expanse of what is now “Nutbourne Park” was a thriving brickworks?  Ever been curious to know whether The Hydons and Hambledon Park always looked the way they do to-day?

Well, thanks to the Hambledon Heritage archive, it’s easy to find the answers to these and many more questions about the village, its activities, its inhabitants and its institutions.   By charting the development of the village over the best part of 200 years, the archive also demonstrates how much the Hambledon of to-day owes to the Hambledon of the past:  there’s nothing new about Hambledon’s community spirit.

The material in the archive has accumulated gradually over the last 60 or so years.  It’s a real social  history, in words and pictures, of families from all walks of life, their homes, their workplaces, their farms;  of the village hubs – the shop, the Post Office (they weren’t always the same thing and the village had more than one shop in the past), the Village Hall, the church and the pub;  the changing landscape; the sporting and social clubs, past and present;  and the institutions (including the Hydestile Hospital and the Hambledon Institute, the predecessors of The Hydons and Hambledon Park respectively – and the Institute was originally the workhouse). 

Disasters (from bombing raids to storms) are recorded;  so are successes such as winning best-kept village competitions and saving the village shop and the school (now the Nursery School).  Village fetes and celebrations of national events ranging from VE Day to jubilees are chronicled in detail.   There are scrapbooks, booklets written by villagers, photographic albums, press cuttings and numerous individual contributions.  On the whole they paint a picture of an ideal village – but don’t be fooled:  less than 10 years ago the Surrey Advertiser reported that “A village regarded by police as one of the safest places to live in Surrey has proved to be the ideal base for two cannabis factories” – which led to the arrest of six people under the Misuse of Drugs Act.   Never let it be said that the archive is a dull read. 

When my mother bought Cobblers, little did she (or I) realise that the two outbuildings that go with it were almost more spacious than the cottage itself.

  This means that I have been able to provide a home for the archive in the sun room.  Anyone is welcome to visit and browse.  You can find a list of all the documents with, in some cases, a list of their contents, on the village web site:  just click on history/historical village documents/the Hambledon heritage albums.  And do please consider whether you can add to this invaluable village resource:  although everything that happens now is media-recorded, that used not to be the case.  Our history is still dependent on paper documents and photographs. 

Government Housing Officials Visit Hambledon Affordable Homes Site

Hambledon Parish Council hosted a visit by 20 civil servants from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government who arrived in the village to look at the Orchard Farm affordable homes project.

The officials are part of the government’s housing team with responsibility for affordable housing strategy. They left their offices in Whitehall to see three schemes being run by English Rural Housing in the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, in Hambledon, Dunsfold and Chiddingfold.

These picturesque villages, in beautiful countryside and with good schools and transport links, are highly desirable and, consequently, house prices are high – on average 34 per cent more expensive than in surrounding areas and almost 23 times the average household income, according to recent figures published by English Rural.

This means that many local people struggle to afford to get onto the housing ladder. English Rural, a housing association whose patron is The Princess Royal, works with local councils and communities to provide homes at lower than market rent or part-ownership in rural areas.

In Hambledon it built Duncombs Cottages on Hambledon Road, Hydestile, which were opened by HRH Princess Anne in 2003. Now it is working with Waverley Borough Council and Hambledon Parish Council to build seven affordable homes and two open market bungalows at Orchard Farm, a disused livery yard between Wormley Lane and Petworth Road.

The civil servants were escorted by officials of English Rural and, in Hambledon, were met by parish council chairman John Anderson and vice chairman Stewart Payne, who explained the background to the scheme, the pitfalls along the way, and the overall support of the village for a small development of affordable homes for local people.

Work has yet to start on the site, so the civil servants were shown the empty farmhouse, which is to be renovated and sold on the open market, and the abandoned buildings that will make way for the new homes.

Nick Hughes, who is leading the scheme on behalf of English Rural, showed plans and drawings and explained the various issues that the scheme encountered before finally being approved by Waverley Council in November last year.

The visit, which took place on January 29th, was welcomed by John Anderson as an opportunity to explain the many difficulties that the parish council faced in helping to deliver a scheme that most villagers had welcomed, but some had opposed vociferously. Legitimate concerns by some residents had to be balanced against the benefits the scheme delivered.

Commenting on the visit, English Rural’s Chief Executive, Martin Collett, said he was pleased “to welcome representatives from the Ministry of Housing to show the affordable homes we have built and are developing in the villages of Hambledon, Dunsfold and Chiddingfold.

He said the visit focused on how parish councils and local; authorities can work effectively with rural housing associations to form strong partnerships that ultimately benefit local residents. “This has a positive impact on their own circumstances and the wider community”, he said. More information can be found here: https://englishrural.org.uk/ministry-of-housing-team-view-affordable-rural-homes-in-surrey/