The Womens Institute
From Lacey Green History
click Organisations that used the Village Hall for others of these
click W I Committee Members for officials
also Windmills WI the evening W I.
click Macmillan Coffee Morning for this W.I. function
click Pancake Race for this W.I. event
click Village Quiz for this W.I. event
The Loosley Row and Lacey Green Women's Institute was started in 1824 and ended in 2011.
Hallmark November 2011. Loosley Row & Lacey Green WI. 89 years old but will not live to be 90! reported by Jean Gabbitas.
Sadly at our AGM in November the representative from HQ will instruct us to close owing to our failure to attract sufficient committee officers to serve.
It is ironic as this year we have had the largest committee ever but most are ready to stand down. However, several of our members also attend the evening WI - “Windmill WI” which is still flourishing and which has agreed to take over the organisation of the Village Quiz.
This year has been exceptionally busy with not only the usual selection of speakers at monthly meetings, but provision of tea for the Windmill Supporters 20th and lunches and teas for the History Group Exhibition. But without new people to take over the organization we must close.
The following will continue:- The Sewing Group, The Thursday weekly coffee to support the Post Office, The monthly Tuesday Pub Lunch at The Black Horse. Finally a new “T at 3” will begin in Jan on the 2nd Wednesday of each month. All welcome (including men) to tea and cakes.
The History of the Loosley Row & Lacey Green WI follows -
The Womens Institute was formed in 1924 by Mrs Tighe of Loosley House and Mrs Ferris.
1974 Bucks Free Press Report. Memorable Golden Jubilee. The Celebration of Loosley Row and Lacey Green WI on March 14th was enjoyed by more than sixty people at a lunch in the Village Hall after a reception when many reunions were made with old friends who came to celebrate. Members had prepared the meal, served on tables decorated with flowers, china and napkins in a gold theme. echowed by larger arrangements of flowers a leaves.
Members welcomed Lady Burnham, retiring president of Bucks Federation of the W.I. During the afternoon other past members came in for tea and a slice of a two tiered cake, made by Mrs Williams and cut by two founder members,Mrs M Adams and Mrs Biggs who were presented with momentoes of the occasion.
A fine exhibition of photographs of past events with copies of reports from the Bucks Free Press of the inaugural meeting in 1924 and subsequent ones had been arranged by Mrs Turner which with our old banner and the new one made an interesting display.
Mrs Harrington read out the cards and telegrams of congratulation but the greater applause was accorded the message from the Queen, a member of the Sandringham Women's Institute, the final touch to a memorable day.
Hallmark October 1975. Report by Madeline Cleaver (click Bill & Madeline Cleaver for more about Madeline).
August is the month when there is no official meeting but members and visitors enjoyed a coffee morning in the attractive garden of Mrs Chalkley on a lovely day early in the month and at the same time raised over £15 for funds by the sale of produce, handwork etc.
The Annual Produce Show was held on 11th September and, although everyone's garden had suffered in the drought, there were good entries in most classes, which made an impressive sight for the patients from Booker Hospital, who were invited to the afternoon meeting. It was possible to move the visitors round in their wheelchairs to view the exhibits and when the ambulance came to pick them up after tea, they were each presented with little pots of flowers. For those unable to come there was a box of grapes. The cup for the highest overall marks was won by Mrs Harrington and the runners up were Mrs Baker and Mrs Weale, who received attractive cards painted by Mrs M Saunders.
The Hall was open to visitors in the evening and about 40 people viewed the exhibits and took part in the raffle for bulb prizes, won by Mrs Turner, Mrs Witney and Mrs Boorman
The 50th Anniversary was celebrated in Lacey Green Village Hall in 1974
1981 Hallmark December. Report from AGM. We are sorry to lose our President Mrs June Weale, who is unable to continue due to family commitments. Our new President will be Mrs K Turner, and we all wish her a happy term of office. click Rees & June Weale for more about June Weale also click Gordon & Kathleen Turner for more about Kathleen
Hallmark October 1985. Extract from the Death of Mrs Peggy 'Pegi' Evans. by Ted Janes
Older inhabitants will remember Mrs Evans as an active woman in The Womens Institute and no doubt remember her with affection as librarian in the days before the mobile library came in 1983, when the County Council had a small library at the Village Hall which was run on a voluntary basis by the Women's Institute.
Hallmark April 1988. "Just Jam, Jerusalem and Jumble Sales" by Kathleen Turner.
Question: Which women's group has a membership of 350,000; has the ear of both local and national government; has some of the best training courses in the country; runs its own Adult Education College; and is the best organised social group in England and Wales ?
Answer: The Women's Institute
Since we now have two WI's in the village, I thought you might like to know a little about our organisation. The Women's Institute started in Stoney Creek, Ontario on February 19th 1897. Adelaide Hoodless, a local farmer's wife was angered by her own and other women's ignorance of childcare and nutrition. Her fourth child had died aged eighteen months and she felt that her lack of knowledge had contributed to that death. So she decided that women should have the chance to learn how to take better care of their families. And ever Since, the principle role of the WI has been as an educational movement.
The WI came to Great Britain in 1915 with the active encouragement of the government who saw that an organisation of countrywomen could provide a valuable addition to the food supply in wartime. The first WI in this country started in Anglesey, at Llanfair PG, closely followed by Singleton and East Dean in West Sussex and by 1917 there were more than 100 WI's in England and Wales.
At this time the basic structure of the WI was set - village WI's belong to County Federations and both are affiliated to the National Federation of Women's Institutes. Each Institute elects its own officers and committee by secret ballot; each Institute also votes for its County Federation Committee and the National Executive Committee, so every WI member has a direct effect on how her organisation is run.
The Women's Institute was founded before women had the vote, so this system of democracy in action must have been heady stuff in those class-conscious days. One President reported that the election for the committee had gone off very well. "We have five ladies, five women and one school teacher". The WI monthly meeting gave (and gives) the members an unprejudiced meeting place, free of any political, religious or class connections. In the early days this was a blessed relief for many women, one of whom said, "This is the first Organisation I've been able to join in my village. Everything else is got. up by the Church or the Conservatives and I am a Catholic and a Liberal".
The WI was truly democracy in action - women who had led lives isolated by class barriers came together to run an organisation of mutual benefit. They learned how to run their own meetings, how to vote for officers, how to speak in front of others, how to make collective decisions, how to put those decisions into effect, how to relate the problems of their own lives to wider problems outside the village, how to listen to what local and national government were saying and doing and how to comment on their actions or stir them out of inaction. WI members today still learn how to do all this and more. Every year in June each WI sends a delegate to the AGM in the Albert Hall where they discuss and vote upon resolutions which have been sent in by Institutes all over the country. If passed, these resolutions are acted upon by the whole movement from our National office which lobbies the government to the local WI writing letters to the Council. In recent years resolutions have been passed on subjects as diverse as the licensing of air weapons, psycho-geriatric hospital care, solvent abuse, artificially produced embryos, acid rain and planning and conservation. As you can see, the Women's Institute cares about people and the environment.
All this sounds very solemn when most people join the WI to enjoy themselves, and don't they just! Loosley Row and Lacey Green Institute is 64 years old in March and in its time it has had choirs, drama groups, folk dance teams, craft groups, countless outings and, of course, hundreds of coffee mornings and tea parties. They canned fruit, knitted socks and ran a National Savings group during the war and ran the local library in the village hall after it. They have learnt to cook, to sew, to make jam, to ice cakes, to knit and crochet, to sing, dance, act and now they run the Annual Village Quiz. Our new Institute, The Windmill WI is only a few months old - but growing rapidly - and has all these pleasures yet to come.
I wonder if they will make a banner for their WI? You have probably seen in the foyer of the Village Hall the original banner of Loosley Row and Lacey Green WI. This was professionally made in 1924, probably on the instructions of Mrs. Tighe, the first President who lived in Loosley House. It is an enlarged photograph of the Windmill which has been printed onto white silk and was made up into a traditional banner with a silk cord edging and tassels. Over the years the chemicals used in the photographic process attacked the silk which started to disintegrate. In 1974 the members decided to make a new banner. The design represents our two villages; on it in applique work are the windmill for Lacey Green and an anvil for the Forge in Loosley Row. The principal colours are green and gold; below the windmill is a curve of beautiful Bucks lace - handmade by dear Minnie Adams to her own design - which represents the hedges of the village in blossom. Every member of the Institute put in at least one stitch. We had working parties every Tuesday afternoon for a year at Jessie Boorman's house (the interfacing between front and back is my children's old cot blanket!) and it was unveiled at our Golden Jubilee in March 1975.
June Weale and Margaret West took charge of the old banner. They very carefully took it to pieces, supported the damaged fabric with stiffening and had it framed. Both banners are on display in Aylesbury at the County Museum at the time of writing. They are part of an exhibition called ‘Standards High' of banners from all over the county.
I hope this article has shown you that the Women's Institute is not just jam, Jerusalem and jumble sales and if you would like to know more, please come as a visitor to any of our meetings. Who knows? You might find it so interesting you will be like Connie Roe - next May she will have been a WI member for 45 years. Loosley Row and Lacey Green WI meet on the second Thursday in the month at 2pm and the Windmill meet on the first Wednesday in the month at 8 pm. Both in the Village Hall. Come and join us!