Cotswold Chatterblog

On Thursday 13th March 2008 Ebrington Womens Institute (WI) celebrated it’s 70th birthday with the a splendid meal, the cutting of a birthday cake and the taking of a group photograph as part of their normal monthly meeting. The speaker was a professional lady toastmaster, one of only four in the country, so it was appropriate for her to keep the birthday events in order.

The WI was formed in February 1938, forty-five women immediately joined and it was agreed that the yearly budget would be £6.10 shillings income and £6. 10 shillings expenditure!
In spite of the difficulties at the start of the Second World War the women of the WI had made 400lbs of jam and bottled 60lbs of fruit by September 1940.
A Village Hall was desperately needed in Ebrington and the WI were the first to start collecting for this cause. Pen friends were written to and one member kept up a long correspondence with an American whose replies were read at many of the WI meetings.
Ebrington WI has always had a strong connection with a WI in New Zealand and there was great excitement when a parcel was received from them containing a fruit cake and soap.
At the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 the WI planted a flowering Cherry Tree opposite the then village Post Office.
In 1965 the then Secretary had been writing all the minutes continously for 27 years!
In November 1969 the speaker at the monthly meeting was from the Midland Bank to explain the new decimal currency system.
The WI “Green and Pleasant Land” was selected to represent Gloucestershire in the Ideal Homes Exhibition at Olympia in London in 1972.
Ladywood in Birmingham was linked with Ebrington WI and members paid a visit to “town” and experienced life in a fifteen-storey block of flats in June 1974.
The WI won first prize of £5 with their exciting float entered in the motorised section of Scuttlebrook Wake in May 1980. The tableau depicted “Sport for All”.
In 1984 Ebrington WI presented “The Family”, a story in drama form of the famous Three Oaks, to the Gloucestershire Federation of WIs at Bishops Cleeve.
The WI won the Campden Area Group quiz in 1987 proving Ebrington was not full of “yawnies”.
In 1988 the WI celebrated their Golden Jubilee with a trip down memory lane with a 1938 evening.
In April 1990 WI members accumulated a large collection of household soap to send to the Romanian people who were suffering from the deprivations of war.
The WI walkers celebrated having walked 500 miles over Gloucestershire and the adjoining counties in 1995. They started in 1981 and have never used the same footpath twice. They then celebrated walking 1000 miles in 2006 with a tea party at Charringworth Farm.

Over the years Ebrington WI have published three books:-
Under the Oaks, The Historical Record of the Parish of Ebrington (1978)
Beneath the Clouds, The diary of a Century in Ebrington, Charringworth and the Hidcotes 1900-2000 (2000)
My Village, My Home, by Jack Wheatcroft (2006) 

Happy 70th Birthday Ebrington WI.

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Tags: ebrington | wi | gloucestershire

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