The members of Bake, Natter and Roll Farnham WI proved how artistic they are when they met at the Small Hall at the Spire Church in Farnham for a craft evening of painting stones on April 16.

It was a wonderful evening to relax and be inspired, painting pre-primed stones of various sizes with acrylic paints.

It was a great opportunity to chat and catch up with fellow members, all the while eating cake and drinking tea. The delicious cakes were provided by Gail and Debi.

Not only was it a craft evening, but it was also a mindful evening. While the members painted they were updated about various Bake, Natter and Roll events and activities that would be coming up in the future, such as the curry club, the theatre group, a possible guided tour of Brookwood Cemetery, plus walks that Bake, Natter and Roll are getting involved in during the Farnham Walking Festival.

The assembled members voted for the Bake, Natter and Roll charity for 2026-27, which will be Change of Scene, a local charity that offers animal-assisted outdoor learning for young people with complex emotional, social and behavioural needs who have recently relocated to Frensham.

The next meeting will be on May 21, when members will be having a visit from Juliet Evans from Hive Helpers. The meeting will start at 7.45pm and will be in the Small Hall at the Spire Church, South Street, Farnham. For more information email [email protected]

Ropley History, the local history group for Ropley and its surrounding villages, will carry out an archaeological dig at Swelling Hill Pond in Four Marks from May 1 to 4.

The group was formed in 2020 and this will be its first dig. It will be led by a member of its steering group, Manni Kirchner, who is a local historian and archaeologist. There will be local volunteers, including some from the Winchester Hyde 900 project.

Ropley History has been researching the history and archaeology of East Hampshire for several years, covering the rural villages west of Alton - Chawton, Four Marks, Ropley, Farringdon and West Tisted among others.

One of its most interesting projects is based at Swelling Hill Pond, a beautiful hill-top pond surrounded by idyllic nature and fed by an ancient chalk spring.

From work there the group knows that the pond has seen intense human activity since the Mesolithic age, 12,000 years ago, through to the modern day.

Its uses include a settlement and flint source in the Stone Age, a ritual and religious site in the Roman period, a meeting place and watering hole for medieval farmers, a brick kiln in the 1600s and 1700s, and the site of a Victorian cottage row, now since lost.

However, much remains mysterious, and finds found during the pond's dredging in the 1970s, although enticing - coins, pottery vessels, axeheads and a Georgian riding cape - have been entirely lost.

The group has now been given permission and support by Four Marks Parish Council to undertake an excavation on the eastern green of the pond from May 1 to 4 to begin to find out what was going on at this fascinating pond over 12,000 years.

It has received grants from a number of local sources to ensure it can run the excavation up to proper legal and research standards, and allow it to create a resource of open and free access information for locals, archaeologists and researchers.

The implications and results of the excavation have many uses beyond just the village. They can help inform how ponds and springs were used throughout human history, and what Stone Age settlement on the chalk downs of Hampshire - so far incredibly elusive - looked like.

For more information visit www.ropleyhistory.org.uk

Carole Oldham

The Vokes Lunch Club is an Alton charity going back to at least 1960.

Original trustees included accountant George Stickland, solicitor John Trimming Willis, Cecil Vokes, founder of the Vokes filtration company, and his secretary, Miss Collen.

Miss Collen had a strong association with the Hampshire Red Cross and owned 100 Normandy Street. She put this into trust for the benefit of the lunch club and the Red Cross Society of Alton.

Cecil Vokes, the youngest of eight children of a south coast property-owning family, was an engineer and prolific inventor. He developed fuel and oil filters for cars and planes.

Vokes Limited was founded in Putney in 1929. In 1939 the government, recognising the importance of these products with war looming, asked Vokes to set up a second factory, which it did in Alton.

In December 1940 the Putney factory was bombed and partially destroyed. At government request to resume production urgently, Vokes relocated its Putney factory to Henley Park, Normandy, where it remained for many years, growing into a large international corporation in the post-war years.

Vokes made a considerable contribution to the war effort. During the desert war in north Africa the Allies were greatly hampered by sand getting into tank and aircraft engines, reducing their operational lives to as little as 12 hours.

Mr Vokes was asked by the ministry of war to fly to north Africa to see the problem first hand and come up with an urgent solution. Within a few days of his return he had developed new filters which resolved the problem and for which he was credited with playing a major role in the success of that campaign.

In 1949 the Alton factory began making artificial limbs and orthopaedic appliances under the name of Vessa. With the subsequent acquisition of another company in Roehampton, Vokes become one of the largest manufacturers of artificial legs in the world.

Vessa was a well-known name in Alton for many years, but has since closed. The lunch club still has members who worked for Vessa or who had relatives or friends who worked there.

The lunch club was registered as a charity in 1968 to “maintain and administer an old people’s club to provide comfort and amenity for the elder people of Alton and the surrounding district”.

For many years the lunch club was run in conjunction with the Red Cross, which also used the premises as its local headquarters. During that time it was well-known locally as the Red Cross centre.

In the early 2000s a policy decision by the Red Cross resulted in its withdrawal of many of its local services nationally to concentrate on its international work, and it vacated the premises.

The Vokes Lunch Club, under its board of trustees, continued providing facilities for elderly people to meet and socialise on a daily basis and enjoy a nourishing home-cooked lunch.

Currently it provides hot two-course meals five days a week, home-cooked on the premises. Members arrive from mid-morning onwards and sit in the lounge, where they are served with tea, coffee and biscuits and can socialise in comfort before going through to the dining room for lunch.

Lunches are an essential feature of the service but the club sees its primary role as reducing isolation among elderly people in Alton and the surrounding area.

Numbers attending have slowly crept back up since the pandemic and the trustees believe there will be a continuing demand into the foreseeable future.

The club has more than 30 members, some coming one or two days a week, some up to five days. On busier days the club serves up to 20 meals. There is a nominal minimum age of 60 but most members are in their 80s and 90s. To arrange a visit call administration manager Carole on 01420 84235.

Chairman of trustees Terry Blake said he had been in the role for 13 years, during which time the club had always had a board of four or five trustees, but the retirement of Lesley Bethell last year after 26 years on the board meant it was down to “three ageing trustees”.

Terry added: “To ensure the longer-term sustainability of the lunch club we urgently need to attract younger trustees. Despite several publicised appeals we have not succeeded in attracting applicants. If we can’t attract new trustees soon the lunch club will be facing an existential threat to its continuity.”

Being a trustee is not onerous but does carry some responsibilities. Trustees provide leadership for the charity, ensuring it meets its charitable objectives and legal obligations, and operational oversight.

Trustees may come from a variety of backgrounds, including organisational and management experience in the private or public sector, although other experience may be suitable.

They must have empathy with elderly people and commitment to supporting the services the club provides to help reduce isolation among local elderly people.

This role is ideal for someone in early retirement who feels they want to make a contribution by giving something back to the community and has time to spare, but it is open to anyone who feels they can contribute. For more information email Terry Blake at [email protected]

Terry Blake