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News archive (pre-2020)

Sax in isolation

A big thank you to Paul Saunders and his colleagues for the musical entertainment in the garden at The Old Rectory on Sunday 6th September.  The sun shone and a great afternoon was had by all. 

Thank you to everyone who supported the event.  An amazing £1,015 was raised which will go towards the urgent electrical repairs, (including some rewiring) required in All Saints' Church.  

Sutton PCC are very grateful to everyone who helped with the afternoon and to William and Jo Hollington for hosting the event.

A special clap for carers

The clap for carers this week was made even more special with a heart-warming rendition of "What a wonderful world" on saxophone. A big thankyou to Alan Collins!

The Wizard of Oz

Sutton Village Hall

Tickets disappeared fast for both performances of The Wizard of Oz on January 24th and 25th. 

Well done and a huge thank you to The Packhorse Players for so many laughs and such excellent entertainment!

Hall maintenance

The appearance of the hall has been improved recently. Five of the hall double glazed window units that had blown and were badly misted up were replaced in December.

 

The committee have organised a few work days and to date three sides of the hall have had the woodwork treated. The next work day will see the last side treated before the end of January if the weather stays fair.

New Year's Day 2020 Petanque competition

New Year's Day was celebrated by many of us with a petanque competition in the hall carpark. A great turnout and a fun start to the new year.

New Year's Eve 2019

The new decade was welcomed in grand style at the Sutton New Year's Eve Ball, where we danced the night away to the music provided by DJ Clive. 

 

At midnight, villagers proceeded to the Packhorse Bridge for the traditional candlelight  gathering. 

 

Happy New Year!

Basin Street Brawlers

On Saturday 28th September, London's top hot jazz band, The Basin Street Brawlers, delighted us with an outstanding evening of jazz and vocals with trumpet, clarinet, saxophone, trombone, piano and guitar.

 

We are so lucky that they come to Sutton to play for us as they are more used to playing gigs at venues such as Ronnie Scott's and the Royal Albert Hall! Their debut album 'It's Tight Like That' was the Sunday Times record of the week.

 

Our sincere thanks to Peter Horsfall (trumpet), Ewan Bleach (clarinet/ saxophone), Malcolm Earle-Smith (trombone), Colin Good (piano) and Martin Wheatley (guitar).

 

We do hope that they will come back to Sutton next year. Watch this space for further details...

If you missed out this time round, you can see them online.

Sutton WI celebrates its 80th birthday

On Tuesday 9th July 2019 Sutton WI celebrated its 80th birthday. We welcomed several guests to this occasion, some old friends and some new. The venue was the village hall in Sutton where the garden there was used and where we ate pizza cooked in the pizza oven by Jackie Ryan, one of our members.

 

To begin the proceedings, we raised a glass of prosecco in honour of the birthday and then began as WI members would have done all those years ago, with 10 minutes of Keep Fit!  Everyone really enjoyed it and thanks must go to Pat Thwaites for organising it and for providing Connor, the personal trainer!

 

Thus energised, the pizzas, salad, strawberries and cream and, of course, the cake were eaten. Thanks must go to Ann Fowler for making the birthday cake so expertly.

 

The evening finished with a showing of a short film which remembered Sutton’s entry into a quilt-making competition in 1995. Some members were most amused to see themselves on the film which was taken nearly 20 years ago! The quilt still has pride of place in the village hall.

 

The next meeting of Sutton WI will take place on Tuesday 13th August at 7.30 pm in Sutton Village Hall. The speaker will be Gaynor Tinsdale and her topic will be about children who use braille. We would be very happy to welcome people to join us so please come along!

Sutton duck race 2019

The famous Sutton duck race took place on Sunday 30th June at 3pm at the ancient packhorse bridge at Sutton Ford. 

 

Prizes: 

1st duck no. 674

2nd duck no. 790

3rd duck no. 393

 

A huge thankyou to everyone who supported this event.

For photos of the fun, please take a look at the Gallery.

An evening of Indian classical music and food

On 4th May 2019, we were treated to an evening of Indian classical music and food. Many thanks to Manjit Singh for organising this.

 

Tickets sold out immediately and proceeds were given to The Autistic Society.

Salsa taster

The salsa taster session was for beginners, taking us through the basic steps, but we soon found out that it's a little like learning to drive. So much to coordinate all at the same time!

 

Andrea and Peter from the Obsesión Bachata Dance Team in Cambridge were excellent instructors, keeping us all on track and motivated. If you'd like to keep practising what you learned, you can view the basic steps here. 

Andrea and Peter gave us a demo of salsa and also delighted us with an impromptu demo of zouk. Click here to see the video. 

You can view photos of the fun in the Gallery.

Plane speaking

The village hall was packed on Saturday evening for a fish and chip supper followed by a very amusing talk entitled "Plane speaking" by Captain Arthur Creighton. 

Arthur is an experienced pilot, having served in the RAF and as a captain with Monarch Airlines. His fund of anecdotes ranged from delivering babies in the aisle, to sick bags and ghosts.

All in all, a very entertaining evening.

Sutton Neighbourhood Plan

A Neighbourhood Plan for Sutton is being prepared, giving the community the opportunity to set out their planning priorities and aspirations for the future of the area.

 

Find out more on their website and Facebook page:

https://www.suttonneighbourhoodplan.org.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/suttonneighbourhoodplan

Widdershins

Rose Red, Snow White, Bear Brown

A magical show for young children. Right from the start, the children were entranced by the fairy tale forest, puppets and lively story-telling. They particularly loved joining in with the animal sounds too. 

 

Look out for the return of Widdershins with their production of Rumpelstiltskin next year. You'll need to act fast as tickets were sold out within the first few days for this performance!

Carpark resurfaced

As you may be aware, the parking area at the hall became unusable last year when heavy rainfall turned it into a mudbath! To avoid this happening again, the area has been resurfaced and extended to accommodate more cars.

Basin Street Brawlers

We were very privileged to have the Basin Street Brawlers perform once more to a very appreciative audience on Saturday.

 

We sincerely hope they will return next year so watch this space for details!

Sutton Day

The pizza oven and BBQ were fired up again for an early evening relaxing in the autumn sunshine. The sizzling of sausages and patting of home-made pizza bases was accompanied by a fine repertoire of modern popular music from the sixteen strong Bedford Ukulele Band. Only with the onset of darkness did the merry makers head home murmuring about having another similar event on New Year´s Eve. I hope they were joking!

Coffee morning and Sutton Quilt video

Another very well attended coffee morning with a delightful selection of cakes. The newly installed projection screen was used to show a video produced in 1996 of the making of the Sutton Quilt. A few of the 'stars' were in the audience. The village hall committee have a copy of the video in DVD format if anyone would like to borrow it.

A diary made at the time outlining the history of the village, the quilt design process, material samples used and a resume of the people involved was also available and made very interesting reading. 

Thank you to those who brought along plants, garden produce and bird feeders for sale.

Duck Race 2018

This years duck race took place on a lovely sunny Sunday. Attendance was a bit down on previous years owing to other events such as the World Cup. But as usual the children enjoyed cooling off in the ford catching the ducks as they crossed the finish line.

Congratulations to the winners. The winning numbers this year were:

1st  - 102

2nd -   80

3rd  - 536

A huge thank you to all those who prepared for and supported this event!

 

BBC Three Counties Radio comes to the village hall

BBC Three Counties Radio hold a live Treasure Quest on Saturday mornings where their reporters compete against each other to find treasure in Beds, Herts and Bucks. They're against the clock as they must complete it within the 3 hours they are on the air. They are given clues for where to go and listeners can call in to help them find their way.

 

The clues last Saturday were:

"Where is the birthplace of General John?"

"Where did royal John have connections to?"

"It's popular with gardeners."

A listener in Milton Keynes called in to suggest Sutton since it was the birthplace of General John Bourgogne and Sutton was held by John O'Gaunt, the son of King Edward III.

The gardening clue turned out to be Suttons seeds!

Once the reporters were on their way to Sutton, they were given the clue "Find where they are being sociable with caffeine". Of course, this was our coffee morning in the hall!

So at 10am on Saturday, Sophie and Tony turned up at the hall where they found out about what we do, enjoyed coffee and cake and picked up a clue for the next stage of their quest.

You can catch Treasure Quest on the Three Counties website. A snippet from their conversation at the hall starts 54 mins into the recording.

Joe Broughton Conservatoire Folk Ensemble

After all the recent rain the sun came out to greet the 48 musicians from the Birmingham Conservatoire. They enjoyed a couple of hours lounging around the grounds putting on their make-up, practising and having some food before people started arriving. The concert was a sell-out with all seats taken and a few standing. The band played some of their well known repertoire from their CD called "Painted" as well as introducing some new numbers including a haunting Icelandic ballad.

 

In-focus pictures of the band in action are hard to come by as they never stopped dancing the whole night! Their youthful exuberance was contagious and by the last number almost everyone was on their feet too. They love coming to Sutton and we look forward to having them here again next year.

Pizza and BBQ Evening

After some doubts about the weather the pizza oven and BBQ were fired up. A sizeable number of people dropped in to BBQ, bake their pizzas, picnic, socialise and play games including badminton. Everyone was too busy enjoying the evening to take any photographs.

Tango evening

The evening started with a workshop led by Bethshona Kenny and Cristian Javier Castaño. Beth and Cris then performed three dances for us. The evening ended with a milonga where everyone had the opportunity to practise what they learned. It was amazing to have such talented dancers to show us how it should be done and we hope they'll come back for a repeat performance.

Official address for Sutton Village Hall

​The Village Hall has now been officially allocated a street number to make it easier for new users to locate. The address is now:

Sutton Village Hall

1A High Street

Sutton

Beds SG19 2NE

Games night and pudding club

At the recent games night, we only managed to finish one game of Balderdash as we spent so much time laughing. The wine and excellent puddings gave us strength to play into the night, so all the other games will just have to wait for next time.

Pancake-making at today's coffee morning

Everyone enjoyed the freshly made pancakes and waffles made at today's coffee morning to mark Shrove Tuesday, but do you know where the tradition of eating pancakes comes from?

 

In Christian traditions, the forty days before Easter are known as Lent and are dedicated to prayer and fasting. The word ‘shrove’ apparently comes from the old Roman Catholic practice of being ‘shriven’, meaning to confess one’s sins.

In the days before this period of abstinence, eggs, butter and other foods had to be used up. Making pancakes was an easy way to do this and to this day, many countries continue the tradition of "Pancake Day".

Brazil and New Orleans refer to Shrove Tuesday as Mardi Gras, literally "fat Tuesday", and celebrate it with huge carnivals, feasting and dancing.

Do join us for our next coffee morning on Saturday 14th April. We won't be offering pancakes, but there will certainly be a wide choice of delicious home-baked cakes to enjoy.

The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book pantomime performed by The Packhorse Players on 19th and 20th January at Sutton Village Hall was a huge success and was enjoyed by a very appreciative audience. You can see photos in our Gallery and on their Facebook page.

 

We very much look forward to next year's production of "The Wizard of Oz".

Accessibility improvements to the hall

Work has been completed on the Village Hall to make life just a little easier for wheelchair users and for those with prams or buggies.

A shallow ramp now leads from the car park to the back of the hall where a new set of patio doors enables direct access into the main hall. This has the added bonus of allowing more light into the hall.

 

The emergency exit now also has its own ramp.

Sutton duck race 2017

This year's duck race was very well attended and we were lucky enough to avoid the downpours of the previous day. Many thanks to everyone who supported this fun event and raised very welcome funds for the Village Hall and the Parish Church.

Date for your diary: next year's duck race will be held on Sunday 1st July 2018. Further details coming soon.

Sutton residents have formed a community group with the aim of supporting and protecting the village and its surroundings. 

 

In response to Central Beds Council's Draft Plan to build 7000 houses between Biggleswade and Sutton, the Community Group have set up a sub-group named "SWORD" (Sutton Will Oppose Rural Development). You can find out more on their Facebook page.

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2013

November 22nd

Holiday adventures & pudding club. Organized by Sutton Village Hall Committee.

 

September 8th

Sutton Rocks

 

July 13th

Village BBQ & Barn Dance. Organized by Sutton Village Hall Committee.

June 1st

Joe Broughton and his Conservatoire Folk Ensemble

February 9th

A Presentation by Anthony Slinn. Organized by the Friends of Sutton Church.

​​2012

November 23rd

Les Miserables by Hotbuckle Productions.

June 3rd

To mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the Village Hall Committee has planted a commemorative maple tree (Acer "Crimson King") in the Village Hall grounds.

 

May 26th

Joe Broughton and his Conservatoire Folk Ensemble

May 5th
French doors have been installed in our hall. We are immensely grateful to the brilliant 'French doors task force' (Derek, Ralph and Gerry). What would we do without our volunteers???

 

March 10th

Great Expectations by Hotbuckle Productions.

 

February 25th

Presentation by Anthony Slinn on Salvadore Dali. Organized by the Friends of Sutton Church.

 

January 20th/21st

Robinson Crusoe by The Packhorse Players.

​​2011

May 21st

Joe Broughton and his Conservatoire Folk Ensemble
 

February 5th

Presentation by Anthony Slinn on Pablo Picasso's Guernica. Organized by the Friends of Sutton Church.

 

February 4th
The Theatre of Widdershins performed the puppet show 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff (and other fairy tales)'.

2010

December 20th

The Theatre of Widdershins performed the puppet show 'Arabian Nights'.

September 19th

Sutton Duck Race
 

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