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Photographs courtesy Valérie Ferris

Following an appeal for help from Arkadii Kostenko, a number of villagers were able to house Ukrainian refugees beginning in April 2022, with some staying to the current day. In January 2023, they said thank you by hosting a lunch party in the Village Hall.

This article written by Jackie Rickenberg was published in the Parish Magazine in August 2022 This is the final story of the Fisher family. Herbert and Lettice have been featured over the last couple of months and now it’s the turn of their daughter Mary. Mary Letitia Somerville Fisher (1913-2005) was an only child, born in London to Herbert and Lettice, but brought up in Oxford where her father was Warden of New College. She was best known as an academic, historian and for her tenure as Principle of St Hilda’s College between 1965 and 1980. Mary had lived (part-time) in our village ever since she was a small child and moved here permanently when she retired. She lived in her parents’ house, Rock Cottage at the top of Highfield Lane. And we were so very fortuitous to have had her, as being an historian, not only did Mary research her own family history, but she documented so much of life as it was in Thursley throughout her time here. The History Society’s archives would be a lot less interesting and poorer, were it not for Mary’s records of the times, the occupants and village life throughout her lifetime. It is amazing that those recollections will be with us for generations to come and will inform and enhance the lives of many families and villagers alike. After Mary obtained her degree from Somerville College, Oxford, she was living at home, researching Roman history and picking up a little undergraduate teaching from friends in other colleges. When war broke out, she felt that she should be doing something more immediately useful to the war effort and so, with the help of one of her mother’s friends, Hilda Matheson, who had been a spy in the First World War, she landed a position in an organisation run by Hilda, (known to the Intelligent Services!) that sent broadcasting material to various countries, with the ostensible purpose of replacing it with covert recordings which were to be smuggled into or dropped over Germany. Very mysterious and curious! In Mary’s own words, the story continues: “I was living in London, on Chelsea Embankment, after Hilda’s premature death. Her company was taken over by the BBC and we moved first to Bedford College in Regent’s Park and then to an ex-convent in Maida Vale. We worked very hard and did a lot of recording, including a good deal of actuality recording, for special recorded programmes. We corresponded with overseas radio stations but, I think rightly, very few people took us very seriously and I doubt we did anything very useful. By this point, my mother had retired from Oxford to Thursley, and I would return at weekends, taking the train to Milford station, where she would sometimes collect me in her small car with her even smaller petrol ration! But I think more often, I took the bus from Guildford and walked up from the Red Lion. To return, I would walk across Upper Highfield Farm to the A3 and take the bus to Godalming station. I was based in London, commissioning and supervising the recording of programmes. The French, were the main point of contact, and we had a liaison officer called Mademoiselle Moulun, whose home was in the Argentine but who had worked as a finishing school teacher in Paris. We would mainly send out pressed 78rpm recordings in brown paper parcels and because they would go by sea mail to consuls to pass on to the local radio stations, they were not very prompt. We would send out light programmes of dance music. The purpose of these recordings was to show the rest of the world that we were still in the field, that things were still happening, that life was going on and above all that the French were still in the field. We were showing that the French had not been forgotten and that was the one undoubtedly useful thing we did because we did convince the Free French that we were batting on their side. By Christmas of 1944 it was clear that the war was coming to an end and so my job became far less interesting and there was really very little point in going on with it. So, I let it be known that I was in the market as I didn’t want to stay with the BBC, but rather do something different. Then there was one of those accidents that happen and change your life. My mother had yet another friend, who had a farm in Hampshire and she used to throw great parties, one of which I was invited to. At the party I found myself talking to a man from the Colonial Office (the Foreign, India, Home and Colonial Offices have now become the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) and during our conversation I said that I was at the BBC but was trying to get out of it. The next day he telephoned to say that he thought there was a vacancy coming up in the Colonial Office and would I be interested? I thought it would be worth trying anything and I got the job! Originally, he thought the vacancy was on the Palestine desk but the job I was posted to was in the Mediterranean department, which was responsible for Malta, Gibraltar and Cyprus. As the war ended our job was to try to cope with the political ferment that it had produced in the colonies, both by economic and social development and by devising new constitutional arrangements, most of which proved shorter lived than we expected”. In 1955, Mary Fisher married senior civil servant John Bennett and from 1965 until 1980, she was Principal of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. They commissioned Jean Cooke to paint this portrait of her: Mary retired from Oxford, as her mother had done before her, to Rock Cottage and from there she filled her days, until her death in 2005, writing her memoirs and her recollections of a bygone Thursley. We shall be regularly featuring Mary’s amusing and incisive musings in months to come.

Photographs courtesy Valérie Ferris

As usual, the village celebrated this Royal occasion and it began with a Royal Ball in the village hall on Saturday, 7th May 2023: A tractor parade... And then a big lunch at the Three Horseshoes on Sunday, 8th May: And ending with a cricket match on Saturday, 23rd May, 2023: The Captains: Neil Woods and Mike Spencer

Photographs courtesy Valérie Ferris

As usual the village turned out in force (all photographs courtesy Valérie Ferris):

From Thursley Parish Magazine October 2019 If you missed the well attended walk around Hammer Pond on Saturday 5th October here are some fascinating facts about this thriving industry. Why Thursley? Thursley Common possessed both iron ore for smelting and peat for fuel and the Hammer Pond could produce power for the hammer. The first reference to Thursley ironworks was in 1574 and it prospered throughout the 17th century. William Yalden was Thursley ironmaster with the industry bringing prosperity and employment to the local gentry – the Yaldens living at Heath Hall Farm and Bell and Smith living at Rake. By 1730 there was enough ore to support two forges and contracts with the Navy for Cannon and Shots. The ore was smelted and beaten into shape by water powered Hammers (the Surrey name for a forge) hence the connection with Hammer Pond. Demand for firebacks started to  replace guns and cannon and by late 1768 the industry was dead. This illustration of the Hammer Forge  shows – the hammer, for beating the iron against the anvil, whose shaft is  pivoted on posts and raised by knobs projecting from the drum, which was  connected to the water wheel by the shaft to produce the power for the hammer.

Reporting from Surrey Live: https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/blank-ammunition-firing-off-common-4818630 Photographs from our archive:

Parish Mag Article May 2022 Thursley Exhibition was held annually in the hall from 1974 – 1984. It was an art and craft extravagance organised by Margie Crawfurd and Georgina Harvey, both residents of the village. Although it started small, as a vessel to allow local artists and craftsmen to display and sell their works, it grew into an important and widely acclaimed showcase for artists from all over the South of England. It reached national prominence in 1982 when it was covered by The Field, and this is an extract from their piece: Art and Craft Ascending The Rise and Rise of a Village Exhibition in Surrey. The Thursley Village Exhibition is now seven years old. It was started as a charity benefit and grew into an informal showcase for artists and craftsmen all over the south of England. Its stature is now such that it can shake hands on equal terms with established galleries. The setting is a Victorian hall in Thursley, a Surrey village which was once a centre of iron making and where one can still see the iron pits and hammer ponds. Nearly 200 paintings and sculptures by 50 artists as well as furniture, silver, glass, ceramics and bookbinding will be exhibited from 25 September – 3 October. Among the equestrian artists is Juliet Jeffrey who is showing a hunting scene from an unusual angle. “It was my own first view of the hunt, looking through the horses’ legs with the hounds bounding in. When they set off it becomes a blur with the flurry of hounds and horses coming and coming and it is this I have tried to capture”. Her other paintings depict Appleby Horse Fair, the big gypsy fair held every June, and one of her favourite subjects – pony sales at which the groups of ponies provide a very paintable series of patterns. Juliet Jeffrey has also illustrated several books including one of Gypsy Poems and Ballads. For some years she was married to Peter Ingram, one of the five gypsy waggon builders in the country and has painted a considerable oeuvre of gypsy life in a style which is an interesting blend of realism with abstract undertones. Paintings of people with their favourite horses and other animals, once the mainstay of the itinerant artist, is again becoming a popular art form. The resurgence of interest of this type of portraiture takes the equestrian artist Susie Whitcombe as far as Australia where she goes to paint animals, for some of the big livestock owners. Miss Whitcombe’s oil on canvas Summer Afternoon, Frensham, in this exhibition depicts three gleaming coated ponies reflected in the limpid waters of a large pond framed in trees and bushes (most likely Frensham Great or Little Pond – Ed). Earlier, in 1980, a press release from the exhibition organiser’s read: For the last six years the Thursley Exhibition has encouraged local artists to exhibit their work. During this period, the organisers have steadily improved the standard of work submitted, kept overheads down and prices low. This year in a bold step to raise the quality again, the organisers have invited a number of artists/craftsmen, who, whilst having local connections, exhibit widely. William Pye is one of our country’s leading sculptors. He will exhibit a stainless-steel work in the garden and his” Californian Bronzes” in the hall. John Donald is designing a collection of ten pieces of jewellery especially for this exhibition. Faith Shannon, from Puttenham, who has just been awarded an Arts Council grant, will exhibit a book she has bound, and her husband, Sandy Mackilligan, a piece of furniture. Lorne Mackean, whose bronzes are in the royal collection (seen in the forefront of the photographs below – Ed), has something at the foundry for us and George Taylor, one of Edward Barnsley’s protegees, will exhibit some wood carvings. From Thursley itself we have Peter Hanauer’s glass bowl, Salli Tomlinson’s “Companions”, as seen on television recently, and the work of the Thursley weavers. Among our favourites at the Royal Academy this summer were Joyce O’Shea, from Godalming, Christopher Harrison from Cranleigh and Cavendish Morton from the Isle of Wight. All will be showing at the exhibition. This is an opportunity to see an unusual exhibition in a particularly pleasant, informal and rural setting. It opens on Saturday 27th September for nine days.

Photographs and news report From Surrey Live: https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/surrey-smouldered-1976-heathland-fires-11314109

The Prince of Wales was proclaimed King George V following his father's death on 6 May 1910, and his Coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on 22 June From Wikipedia: 1911.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_of_George_V_and_Mary