Christmas & New Year Greetings 2007

Incredibly the Marple Website was nine years old in October 2007. Where does the time go?

It doesn't seem like twelve months either since our last annual 'look back', at least not until you start to examine what has been achieved in this short period. For us the main highlights of 2007 were linked to our involvement with Friends of Marple Memorial Park, Marple Locks Heritage Society and the Iron Bridge Project, and what an amazing year it's been!

Fundraising was a major theme of the past year, most significantly for the Iron Bridge in Brabyns Park. Four years of working closely with Stockport Council and Marple Local History Society on the project planning phase culminated in the submission of our full application to the Heritage Lottery Fund in January 2007. In June, after six nerve-racking months, we were delighted to learn that the HLF had agreed to award us a grant of £424,700. This was a significant portion of the total project costs of £556,000 but equally significant was the involvement of the local community in fundraising and supporting the project. The HLF told us that this was a key factor in our successful bid. The number one highlight of our year has to be witnessing the crane lift off the Bailey bridge and being the first people to walk on the old iron bridge for 16 years!


The Bailey Bridge comes off

Mark and Ann Hearle celebrate

As with the earlier phases of the project, the restoration work has not been without its set-backs and delays. You can read all about these in the Project Diary and we hope you will be able to watch much more activity on our web cams early in the New Year.

Sticking with the theme of fund-raising we should mention our Marple and Mellor Calendar, which we've been producing since 2003. We were pleased to be able to donate £1,200 from the sales of the 2006 calendar towards the Iron Bridge Project match-funding last year. At at the beginning of this year we were able to donate £500 to the Friends of Memorial Park and £500 to Marple Locks Heritage Society from the sales of the 2007 calendar and we've ended the year by making a donation of £1,000 from the 2008 calendar sales to the Friends of the Park too. This will go towards new equipment in the infants play area and we are also very pleased to advise that the installation work on this will commence early in the New Year.


A 3d rendition of the Friends proposals for the Infants Play Area
(a close but not exact representation of the final scheme).

Of course the new play area equipment is not just the result of our contribution! Once again it's a community effort that has bought the new scheme to fruition. The Friends of Marple Memorial Park have made huge efforts to raise funds by holding tombolas on Carnival Day, at the Locks Festival, the Food Festival, the Christmas Cracker and Marple Bridge Winter Wonderland. The Friends have in turn been given superb support by the local business community, who have donated a fantastic array of prizes to help the group to raise £1,620 towards the new equipment. Marple Carnival Committee and the Ring o' Bells quiz nights have also contributed significantly to this total and we've just learnt that Brabyns Preparatory School have raised an additional £743 with a sponsored "bounce" by their pupils. Stockport Council have also given tremendous support to help the Friends of the Park achieve their aims.

The £500 donated to the Friends from the 2007 calendar sales resulted in one of our proudest moments when, on Remembrance Day in November, a new memorial stone was unveiled to commemorate the Bowling Green Shelter being built in 1923 by local servicemen who returned from the Great War in memory of their comrades who did not. The huge audience was far beyond our expectations and it was rewarding to see this so well received.


Peter starts the proceedings at the unveiling ceremony

The £500 donated to the Marple Locks Heritage Society will be used to provide a plaque dedicating the new Lock 17 display on Oldknow Gardens to the late Gordon Mills. This project, to permanently recreate Stockport Council's award winning 2006 Tatton Show entry, is yet another illustration of the ability of Marple's community groups to work well together. The project was conceived by the Friends of the Park and the Locks Society and supported by the council's Parks & Recreation Team, who provided funding for the replica lock gates as well as doing the heavy installation work. Additional funding was provided by Marple Area Committee and Churches Together joined the Friends and the Society to plant the winter bedding in September. We hope to install Gordon's dedication plaque in the the spring of next year, subject to agreeing the details with his family.


Young and old work together to plant up the display

Finishing touches are put to the locks display

Continuing with the activities of the Friends of Marple Memorial Park, this small group of volunteers has had an incredibly successful year. Two of their highlights not yet mentioned were winning a BBC Breathing Places grant for an outdoor reading area in the woodland behind Marple Library and commissioning the wonderful tree sculpture in the park.

The sculpture was an overwhelming success, thanks mainly to the incredible talent of chainsaw artist Andrew Frost. Andrew's design drawing made it easy for everyone to envisage what he planned for the remains of the old beech tree and helped the Friends convince Marple Area Committee and Marple District Centre Partnership to contribute £1,000 each towards the cost. The Friends of the Park also raised a further £1,000 by winning a Voluntary Arts Grant from Stockport Council to make up the balance of the £3,000 needed. Andrew's design also inspired local school children to participate in a consultation process that saw nearly 500 drawings submitted and close to 1,000 votes to name the owl. Midnight was the winning name and work started on the main sculpture at the Locks Festival on 1st July and was finished in September. Andrew has also carved seven ground sculptures that are planned to be installed in the New Year. The bad news is that one of these, an apple, has been stolen from the Council's yard at Brabyns Park but we have recently learnt that Andrew has agreed to replace it free of charge, proving that his generosity is a great as his skill with a chainsaw.


The Friends of Marple Memorial Park with Cllr Shan Alexander

The Breathing Places project, which was awarded a Big Lottery Fund grant of £6,460 in May 2007, has got off to a relatively low key start but was given a great boost by Marple's Beaver Scouts in November when they planted hedgerow packs provided by the Woodland Trust to commemorate 100 years of the Scouting Movement. Marple Scouts celebrate their own centenary next year, showing that they must have been one of the earliest groups to be established across the whole country. The reading area is is another project that we expect to see progressing much better in the New Year, so there's no let up from the Friends of Memorial Park just yet!


Scouts leader Lisa Bintliff with Marple Beavers in the Breathing Places Woodland

Before leaving the subject of fundraising we really must mention another great success story. The Ring o' Bells fun quiz nights have been running since 2002 and were the single biggest contributor to the Iron Bridge match-funding, raising nearly £4,000 for this cause. Earlier this year Peter trawled though the records of each quiz night held at the pub since they first started and added up how much has been raised for all local causes over the past five years. At the end of 2007 this has reached an astonishing £21,634, with £4,771 raised in the last year alone. This is a fantastic achievement that has benefited a large number of local organisations and charities as well as causes close to our own hearts.

We've mentioned local organisations and the local business community several times, and Marple is renown for having so many great volunteer groups, but they've really excelled in 2007 to give Marple residents an incredible year of celebrations. The annual Marple Carnival, the 45th since its revival in 1962, was the jewel in the crown proving as popular as ever. The now well established bi-annual Locks Festival was also a great summer event but the huge success of the brand new Marple Food Festival in September really took everyone by surprise. We also benefited from the second Firkin Challenge and the first Marple 10k Fun Run and Walk organised by Marple's firefighters and another brand new event, the Christmas Cracker, arranged by Marple Business Forum. All credit to these groups, who we're delighted to support and be associated with through the web site. We look forward to your efforts to entertain us in 2008 when we hope the Romiley Young Farmers Show will be back with a vengeance too!


A panoramic shot of Marple Food Festival taken by Arthur Procter

While on the topic of community groups, we've been pleased to welcome Marple Arts Group, Silk-n-Threads, Marple Civic Society and Cycle Stockport to our expanding Community Pages. We've so many groups featured now that we're going to have to think about reorganising during next year.

The web site as a whole has continued to go from strength to strength in terms of its popularity with more than 52,000 visits to the main site this year taking us to over 288,000 since 'records began'. The new Virtual Tour introduced in 2006 has displayed its images nearly 200,000 times in the last year and we've added more than 400 new ones since the 1st of January 2007. The new images have come from many different sources, and we thank everyone who has contributed, but we must make special mention of Ray Noble, who has given us so many great pictures in the last 12 months. Thank you Ray and apologies if we don't always manage to keep up with the new stuff you send!

A scan through the "what's new" page for 2007 shows that our main focus and much of our time has been taken up by the Iron Bridge Project or the Friends of Memorial Park activities this last year and there has been no time to add any significant new features to the web site, to fix the guest book or to update the pub guide. We make no apologies for this but we do have plans to unveil a major new addition soon that we think will be of great interest to local people, especially those who went to school in Marple between 1957 and 1974. Is that you? You'll have to wait and see but hopefully not too long.

On that cryptic note we'll sign off for 2007 by wishing all our visitors, both local and from all around the world, a very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year for 2008.

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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