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The Village
History
Harting Old Club
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Horace Mansfield, a heating engineer, raised
some of the funds for the new Church Boiler in his three years
as chairman and this was the first time that a single project
was part funded by the Festivities. By this time the Flower arrangement
tent had become quite famous for the quality and originality
of the exhibits, and there was hot competition to win the classes.
There were 6 to 8 classes some of which the public were asked
to vote on. There was plenty of excitement with a dog show and
comic cricket match. We also ran sports, Reg Budd did the donkey
rides, there was maypole dancing organised by Karen Giri and
a Punch and Judy. Most years we were fortunate to have a display
of Vintage cars and machines put on by the LL club.
John Foreman was chairman in 1970,71 followed
by Michael Casement in 1972 when he raised £1100 which
was half the sum needed to purchase the first Harting Minibus.
An anonymous donor loaned the remainder and Daffodil arrived
in the village, so called because she was bright yellow and came
in March. We had awful problems with the bus drivers union at
that time as we were illegally running on their routes for a
while and John Foreman and I had to go up to the Transport Department
in Westminster to argue our case with the then Minister Norman
Fowler and his PPS Kenneth Clarke. We only succeeded because
the Southdown bus company had cut our hourly service to only
twice a day.
Ken Hughes, having already been one time
secretary and also treasurer for several years followed in 1973,4
and raised the necessary to pay off the bus loan and hand over
to Jack Masefield who as churchwarden at that time wanted to
raise the funds to convert the church clock to electrical winding.
For the previous 40 odd years it had been wound by Horace Brightwell
for the sum of Ten pounds a year with Ron White as a standby.
As it had to be wound everyday 176 turns of the two-handed winding
handle on the chime and also less turns on the strike and movement
it was a remarkable improvement and it has gone smoothly ever
since.
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