Feltham Rotary Club

12 August, and the DG accompanied me on an official visit to Feltham Rotary Club, who meet in the Community Hall at the Fairholme Estate in Bedfont.  Fairholme Estate is a very unusual development of low-rental housing, built in the 1930’s following a generous bequest by Elizabeth Jones, a resident of Fulham.

                                                           The community hall at Fairholme Estate

 The attractive houses are positioned around a large quadrangle and communal garden, and there is a fine community hall which is available for hire. There are no in-house catering staff at the Assembly hall, so the Rotary club hire caterers, or sometimes cook the meals themselves in the well-equipped kitchen.

Feltham Rotary Club boast Immediate Past RIBI President (or IPRIBIP) Nan McCreadie among their membership, so in visiting this club, I felt I was moving in the appropriate circles for a Consort in my position.
 

As we turned off the busy Staines Road in Bedfont, and entered through the electric gates, it was like going back in time. We drove through the immaculately kept development, with manicured lawns and colourful flower beds and arrived at the Community Hall, a beautiful building which boasts a clock tower. We were warmly welcomed by members as we parked right outside the entrance to the building, and once inside the building we met their president Daphne Cass. This was one of the weeks where their usual caterer was not preparing the food, and so a member volunteered to do the cooking. This week it was none other than Nan McReadie in the kitchen, so I felt doubly honoured to have my dinner cooked by the IPRIBIP.

                                                                                 Nan presides over the kitchen

Nan had cooked a fine chilli con carne, with enough for seconds for me and also a home made blackberry and apple tart. It reminded me that I had been picking blackberries only a couple of hours before. They are very early this year, and I am keen on using them to make jam and pies, crumbles etc.

                                                                             The DG with president Daphne Cass

I found myself sitting next to an honorary member of the club, Eddie Menday, who is a local historian and journalist with the Hounslow Chronicle. He entertained me with  some fascinating stories about the area.  For instance during the First World War (a very topical subject this year), a number of Danish sailors were incarcerated in what is now Feltham Young Offenders Institution (formerly called Feltham Borstal). Apparently Germany had declared Denmark as part of its own territory, so consequently any Danes south of the Danish border in 1914 found themselves drafted into the German army. Some were captured by the British, and spent the rest of the war at the Borstal site. However, their treatment did not appear too harsh, as the Danes were regularly seen around Feltham and were rather popular with the locals. However, they were badly affected with the virulent flu pandemic which swept the country in 1918, and some of them died. Their graves can still be seen at the Young Offenders Institution.

                                                             More Girl Power - President, DG, Past RIBI president

Feltham is a small but very active Rotary club, with several members living some distance away. This I understand to be due to people joining the club as members when they were working in and around Feltham, although living elsewhere, and subsequently retiring from their businesses, meaning that few of them now live locally, and have to travel some distance to attend meetings. Philip Rowling, for instance, lives out to the west of the District, in the Camberley area, but is nevertheless one of their most active members.

The DG, as she has done in all her club visits to date, refrained from delivering a long speech, but instead asked members why they joined Rotary, and what they got from it (What is your personal dividend? She asked). This prompted a lively discussion during which some of the older members indicated that they originally joined for business reasons, as some years ago the Rotary club would have the great and the good of Feltham among its membership, such as Bank Managers, solicitors and business owners, large and small, so there would have been good networking opportunities for new members.

The most interesting response was from Fida Rahemtullah, who said his Rotary career started when he lived in Swaziland 50 years ago then continued when he moved to Mombasa, then finally to the UK. In both Swaziland and Mombasa he said that the communities were divided along ethnic lines, and did not mix. However in the Rotary Club, members were drawn from all communities and were able to work well together for the greater good.

Later, the DG fielded questions about the re-districting, which is to take at the end of her year, when District 1140 (ours) is due to merge with District 1250, which covers the rest of Surrey and continues south to the coast. Members seemed to be happy with the DG’s departure from the usual format of a DG visit.

The meeting ended with an unusual presentation to Nan McCreadie from Daphne.  A beautifully ornate teapot, shaped like the world globe was originally presented to Feltham club some 8 or so years ago, in recognition of their efforts in selling tins of Yorkshire tea, which was a Rotary initiative to raise funds for, I think, the Polio campaign. Apparently Feltham raised more than any other club in the District, and were rewarded with this ornate teapot, one of only 500 ever made. It became known in the Feltham club as the Eric Cass trophy, in memory of Daphne’s late husband, and was awarded each year to the ‘naughtiest’ member of the club.  I’m not sure what  Nan did to win this trophy but she must have been very naughty indeed.

                                                                               Nan receives the Eric Cass Trophy