Page 1 - SHS Newsletter 2 Vol 3 Sept 29th 2020
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Stalbridge History Matters Volume 2, Issue 3
Sept 29th
The History Society Newsletter 2020
VE Day Celebrations 1945
Contents and 2020
❖ From the Chairman …
❖ VE Day 1945 / 2020
❖ Ask the Locals
❖ Mystery photo Solution 8 May 1945 was a day of nationwide rejoicing
❖ Letter to the Editor because the war in Europe had ended. Men who
❖ Boy on a bike! had been taken prisoner in Europe and survived
❖ Never ask a Local could now come home, but not of course
❖ Stalbridge Parish Mag 1880 Japanese prisoners of war until after August 1945.
❖ Stalbridge Park Wall
The church bells rang for the victory. They’d been
❖ Janice Pickard Remembers silent all through the war and only to be used in
❖ Canal Stalbridge never had the event of an invasion and now people flocked
❖ From Small Acorns (3) to their churches to give thanks. The Women’s
❖ Newsletter help! Institute in Stalbridge had worked very hard all
❖ Contacts through World War II to create a Welcome Home
fund for returned service men and had produced
From the Chairman a useful sum of money to help them adapt their
lives as civilians. One young man came to live in
Stalbridge who had driven one of the first bread
In 2012 Jane Daggett started the Stalbridge lorries into Belsen concentration camp.
History Group, a small informal team that
produced the Stalbridge History Trail. When Jane Now on 8 May 2020 we celebrated the event 75
stepped down, the group reformed itself as The years later only we couldn’t really celebrate it. In
Stalbridge History Society, with a Constitution - normal times there would have been a parade of
and a bank account! The first Open Meeting, to ex-service men, a service in church and
introduce the Society and encourage refreshments at the British Legion. The covid 19
pandemic and subsequent lock down starting in
membership, was held in July 2016. Our focus is March, made celebrations impossible.
on local history rather than tracing ancestry but
sometimes the two cross paths. We will try and
help if we are able. We work alongside our
colleagues who run Stalbridge, (at various
times Staplebrigge, Staplebridge, Stapleford,
Staplebrige etc,) a small town and a parish in
Dorsetshire. The town stands on an affluent of the
river Stour, with a station on the Somerset and
Dorset railway, 116 miles from London, and 6 E
by N of Sherborne. It has a post, money order, and
telegraph office under Blandford. It was known at
Domesday as Staplebridge, contains a beautiful
ancient cross, about 30 feet high, and has four
th
Hilary listens to wartime songs, VE Day 75 Anniversary,
th
8 May 2020, outside The Old Hind, Stalbridge
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