Report of the Annual General Meeting on 14th April 2005.

This report first appeared in The Parish Magazine of Greater Whitbourne, May 2005 edition.

Thursday, April 14th, saw our Village Hall well-attended for the Annual General Meeting of the People of Old Whitbourne Project. That part of the meeting concerned with the financing of the project was expeditiously dealt with by Sir Nicholas Harington, and the Election of Officers by Dr Kate Lack. The existing committee was unanimously re-instated and Lawrence Haddock was co-opted, a move welcomed by those who have been doing the hard graft of planning and organising. Something of the nature of this time-consuming work was brought out by Ann Roberts in her overview of the year's activities.

We heard, for example, of plodding through frozen and muddy fields as villagers, archaeologists, and the video-film recorder looked at "bumps and humps" in orchards and farms. Short, appetite-whetting reports were given about those parts of the project examining the oral history, the individual buildings, and the village archives. Especially heartening was learning the extent of the involvement of the children in the school. Ann pointed to a host of events planned for the Spring and Summer. Clearly, the project has captured the imagination and active participation of our village.

Before the welcome refreshments, Kate gave us a fascinating account of how, in 1349, the Plague, the infamous Black Death, ravaged mainland Europe before eventually invading this sceptred isle. In the absence of direct historical evidence, she showed, from Diocesan and Parish records, how we ight infer the impact of the Plague upon the polulation size and working practices of villages such as ours. Life was never to be the same again when the ghastly horrors of the epidemic had exhausted the people and the land.

Michael Tobin.