Wear your Red Nose with Pride!

Can you believe the first Red Nose Day, aka Comic Relief, took place in 1988?

Crikey, that made me feel old when I looked it up! Of course it makes sense because Live Aid in 1984 kickstarted the whole idea of mass fundraising events in the UK, and others were bound to follow.

That first Red Nose Day raised £15 million as apparently more than 30 million people tuned in to watch the likes of Black Adder and the Young Ones.

Since inception, £1,068,416,012 has been raised for charities (this sum also includes amounts from Sport’s Relief events). The single most successful fundraising year was 2011, when £108,436,277 was collected.

That is a staggering amount of money raised by the British public, but I can’t help but wonder if this year will be (in comparison) disappointing as the cost of living crisis continues to bite. Last year’s total of £42,790,147 was the lowest since 1999 - I think this year’s total will be lower still.

So where does all this money go?

Well, according to the Comic Relief website, the money raised has helped to support 11.7 million people worldwide. In their 2021/2022 accounts, 54% of the grants made during that financial year were to UK based charities and individuals, although in previous years, it does seem to have been slightly tipped in favour of overseas operations.

So what can YOU do to help with this year’s fundraising on Friday 17 March?

The easiest (and quickest) way would be to purchase one of the “new” red noses; they are on sale, priced at £2.50, from the Comic Relief website (although when I wrote this article they were out of stock!) and on Amazon. This year’s noses are a little different to past years as they are partially made of paper - opening up from a flat crescent (easy to post) shape into a honeycomb-paper sphere.

If you want to get more involved and have more fun, why not organise a “bake-off” at your place of work? Or have a dress up /dress down/ fancy dress/ dress in red day at your school, work, or college.

Maybe you could organise challenges, be they physical ones like running/ jumping/ skipping/ swimming, or more cerebral such as quiz nights. There are lots of different ways to fundraise, but for Comic Relief, the funnier, the better!

Of course, you could simply head to the website at any time or call /text on the day of the TV show and pledge however much you can afford.

Whatever you do, have fun and remember any donation is better than none - and if you would rather give directly to a local charity, I am sure they would be VERY grateful.

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Cannon Mill, Furnace Hill in Chesterfield formed part of the Griffin Foundry of John and Ebenezer Smith and Co., 1775-1833. It was the casting shop and a plaque on the wall dates it to 1816, though this is possibly not accurate.

It was last restored in 1951. The building is a 2-storeyed red-brick square with a coped gable end with ornamental cresting and a pantiled roof. There are 3 sham Gothic arches. The date plaque has a portrait of a cannon and cannon-balls but isn’t the year of the buildings construction. Originally a cannon foundry, the building was water-powered with a Head Goyt carrying water from the Hipper into a tank above a large cast-iron overshot water wheel, returning to the Hipper via a tail race close by. Cannon Mill was probably erected between 1788 and 1791 as an additional casting house for an existing furnace and foundry complex (the Griffin Foundry) leased in 1775 by Ebenezer Smith & Co. from James Shemwell. The firm manufactured engine cylinders and cannon until 1833, and a plaque with a cannon and the date 1816 probably commemorates the Battle of Waterloo. The mill was eventually bought by Robinson & Sons in 1886 and redeveloped for cotton manufacture. What survives today is a brick shed with pointed arched openings on two sides and remnants of a water wheel. The firm is likely to have been manufacturing cannons and cannon balls for the American Independence battles of 1778-83, and would have supplied munitions for the wars against France, Spain and Holland and later still for the Napoleonic Wars from 1793-1815. Over a similar period there was a strong demand for Newcomen steam engines for pumping out lead mines and later for collieries and textile mills. They were designed by Francis Thompson and some of them were manufactured at this site. The decline of Griffin Foundry has been blamed on a number of reasons: the supplies of ironstone began to fail locally; the foundry was too far away from the Chesterfield Canal with its cheaper transport costs; and the third generation of Smiths were less able businessmen than their predecessors. There was also a major slump in the iron foundry business following the Napoleonic Wars and very low prices prevailed for some years, which would have certainly weakened the Griffin Foundry. It closed in 1833, and the various components sold on for several uses. What of its future? A Cannon Mill Trust CIO was formed in 2020 with a view of restoring the building to enable it’s use to be become a new local asset.