Committee Meeting - 20th June 2025
Our June Committee meeting took place in the aftermath of the annual banner hanging weekend, where Saturday saw a team of volunteers attaching banners to poles and allocating them to specific properties according to who had hired which banner this year, whilst Sunday saw hanging teams working across the town centre shinning up and down ladders to festoon the streets with colour. This year saw a record 205 banners flown – a testament to the hard work of our painting team who had pulled out all the stops to restore any showing signs of wear and tear, as well as creating replacements and new designs drawn from our banner book, which continues to be a top seller. In more far flung areas of the town, outside the reach of our hanging teams, our new printed banners are providing a popular option for those who want to join in the spirit of the banners.
We also looked back on another successful Anniversary Walk, this year held in much more clement weather than last year’s muddy trek. Again, two groups of walkers set off from Tredington village following the route likely to represent the left and right wings of the Yorkist army on their approach to battle, rendezvousing at the Gupshill Manor for coffee before exploring the battlefield itself and returning to the town in time to enjoy the Armour Behind the Abbey event.
In other projects, we’ve now secured consent from all the occupants of properties within the boundaries of the Abbey scheduled ancient monument to the erection of our planned sculpture of Queen Margaret of Anjou, which will hopefully allow Historic England to approve our application which, added to the planning permission already secured, will allow us to press ahead. A fundraising campaign will be launched, too. Our efforts to bring together a consortium of local community groups to secure the future of Elizabeth Wyatt House also continue.
Our next focus, though, will be the Medieval Festival on 12 and 13 July where, as usual, the Society will be sponsoring the exhibition tent housing displays from fellow charities and non-profit heritage organisations, along with the stunning display of art by Graham Turner. We’ll also be running regular short battlefield tours to allow visitors to orient the re-enactment they’ll be watching to the ground on which the Battle itself was fought. The team will be staffing our stall in the exhibition tent, so why not pop in, say hello, and maybe get involved…