Batcombe

REP & DISTRIBUTOR: Johnny Gibbs jg@intramar.co.uk 83187

Batcombe Church

On 12 May, we held our APCM with all PCC officers being re-elected.

On 20 May the church was almost as full as coronavirus guidance allows for the baptism of Sholto Isles. The photo below shows Sholto about to be christened by the Rev Tony Gilbert, with Fred and Tattie (father and mother), Alfie (brother) and Andrew (grandfather).

Bolster the Beams

Photo: J Gibbs

We introduced the BtB fundraising in May and since then, through the generosity of many of you, we have made an excellent start to our fundraising. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed. Anyone still wishing to help with a donation, please contact PCC Treasurer, Julie Gibbs (julie.m.gibbs@gmail.com).

Batcombe Church Lottery

The prize-winners were:

May 2021

1st No 34 Dawn Andrews 2nd No 13 Amy Sellick 3rd No 49 Marion Fudge

Renewal August ‘21 to July ‘22

Everyone is welcome to help BtB fundraising by buying tickets – £12 buys a ticket in 12 monthly draws for cash prizes. Please contact Bridget Gordge or me for an application form by 31 July.

Johnny Gibbs

When Mike Williams was an engineer at Westland and filling the WVM Batcombe correspondent’s role in 1990, he looked at the village from the air and described it in the following article. It’s a nice reflection that 21 years later he would see that little has changed, and its beauty still remains.

“The 17th of January provided a pleasing opportunity for the Batcombe correspondent to inspect his estate (all 1/6th of an acre) from the air by helicopter. Unfortunately no camera was available at the time so the following details are dimly recollected from the sinking sands of memory.

The pleasure of the occasional smallaircraft traveller is always, I feel, more heightened than that of the regular traveller. Thus it was that, clattering southwards from Yeovil late morning on a fine sunny day, the earth took on an almost mystic aspect from 1000 feet. Familiar landmarks would suddenly take place and orientate the traveller’s eye: Sutton Bingham to the right, the unmistakable Dorchester road snaking southwards and then Stan Jessop’s garage at the crossroads, sliding underneath the craft as I sped, towards Batcombe.

In a previous article in this magazine, I hinted at the uplifting effect which occurs when climbing hills and gazing downwards, a constant pleasurable preoccupation for me through the years and in different lands. Flying produces an exhilaration which is similar but different, in that philosophical musings which arise from earthly hilltops have little time to form whilst the mind is preoccupied and dominated by the awareness of a machine and its distance from the earth and other flying objects. Nevertheless, whilst moving above the land and taking in its details, a strange sense of time warp seems to take place; the earth looks older, seems to diminish manmade objects and accentuate the superiority of the landscape to puny, alien constructions.

Copses, woods, thickets nestle secretly, seemingly far-distant from path or road, with wildlife unseen within. The slopes and hill-rises emphasised from groundlevel are flattened from the air, their contours ‘washed-out’.

Suddenly, a familiar reference point: the glorious single-line railway shining down to Weymouth, but here’s Batcombe and the familiar pile of rubble (really must paint it this summer) as we bank left over Harris Farm and peer downwards and sideways and circle over the house (funny how the garden always looks tidy from the air). Lucky also, that all the cattle are inside at this time. A final hover opposite the house then it’s up and over Batcombe ridge, the church nestling in the hollow, and out, westwards with the go-kart track on our left and the amazingly straight Dorchester road over the high downs.

To the south, the sun lit up a vast sea stretching from east to west and as we gained height and got on with the business of the day, Exeter appeared in the south west. Below, new uplands, dark hollows, unfamiliar secret places coloured by the sun remained impassive as the transient arrangement of nuts and bolts with finite organisms within, moved over the surface of the land and was gone.”

Michael Williams