EWSNEWS June 2021

The story so far

Friday 21 May. Zoom talk on the history of Ancrum at 7.30pm

Another successful zoom meeting enjoyed by at least 25 of us.* Mr Geoff Parkhouse gave us a splendid talk on the archaeology and history of Ancrum and district, enlivened with colourful slides and helpful maps. Performing an archaeological dig on a site under a stream wearing fisherman’s waders must have been a sight to behold – “Time Team” please note! Geoff has kindly offered to guide us round the exploration site if a future outing can be organised and he recommended the following books for further reading:

“David 1, the King who made Scotland” by Richard Oram
“The Faded Map, Lost Kingdoms of Scotland” by Alistair Moffat
“Aneirin, The Gododdin” translated by Steve Short
“Atlas of Scottish History to 1707”
“The Men of the North, the Britons of Southern Scotland” by Tim Clarkson

During the evening, James Holloway mentioned the book “Welsh Origins of Scottish Place-names” by William Oxenham and very kindly donated three copies to the Society. Please get in touch if you would like to borrow a copy. Dipping in, I found it so absorbing I had to reheat my porridge – twice!

* Huge apologies to any member who was unable to join the zoom meeting because the hypertext mysteriously took you back to the April meeting. Hypertext – or gobble-dee-gook as we techy people call it – is a very strange tool, which works wonderfully well when it wants to, but sometimes JUST DOESN’T! The ID and passcode option is a bit more of a fiddle, but a safer option.

Society news

Forthcoming events

We have nothing planned just now, hope to reconvene after the summer.

EWS Accounts to 31 March 2021

The accounts for the year ended 31 March 2021 have now been finalised. They were prepared and signed off by David Hughes (Treasurer) and reviewed and signed off by Jim Hughes (Independent Financial Examiner)

Given the disruption over the last 15 months or so there were very few transactions to be accounted for. In summary –

  • Loss of £167 for the year – primarily a result of the cost of the Zoom, website and e-mail licences / subscriptions. The only income was £50 paid to the Society for some Welsh translation work undertaken.
  • Net Assets of £2,798 at 31 March 2021 – being bank / cash balances of £2,825 less accruals for expenses of £27.

If any member wants to see more details then please contact David Hughes.

Welsh books available for borrowing …

David Hunter, Eirlys’s son, has donated some of her collection of books to the Society, as she is currently in Lauder Lodge Care Home. David Hughes currently has them and will bring to the next real meeting.


And finally …

I was very sorry indeed to hear that John Llewelyn had died on 7 May. John was a kindly, gentle-spoken, interesting and very learned man. He had been a member of the Society for many years and also of Nerys Ann’s Welsh classes. He will be much missed by those who knew him. Many thanks to Nancy Hacking for letting me know.

Jennifer

Jennifer Welsher – Ysgrifenyddes CCD / Secretary EWS