Finally, Spring has arrived and we have come to the end of another year of website activity. The new style website is now 5 years old. Thanks, as always, to our sponsors who contribute to the maintenance costs and initiatives the website team plan. More importantly their visible support helps to create the awareness across the village and the wider community of what the website offers to all.
Our ‘hits’ continue to grow, but more steadily now, averaging around 5,200 each month, but spiking at over 7,000 when there are items of significant interest happening. Interestingly our Facebook link has also seen significant growth as people use the technology to link to other devices and receive alerts for new ‘posts’ on the site.
This year we continued our occasional series about people and places in Geddington and were grateful to Sally Barlow for sharing her father’s diary so that we could tell the story of Lee’s Way and the family that completely refurbished one of the cottages. It was particularly interesting because we had so many good photographs to link to the story.
GADs has been a village organisation for many years, started by several young couples who had moved into the village when housing was available in the new Skeffington Close. As we discovered though, the tradition of light opera and amateur dramatics went way back before the second world war. With patrons and supporters from the Boughton estate and the de Capel Brooke family in Great Oakley, the villagers of the time revealed a strong talent for music, theatrical design and public performance. Our GADs series continues with the ‘post’ about the latest decade about to the published. We now have a wealth of 
material in the Archive in relation to this popular organisation.
The Archive itself has been boosted by over 80 contributions from Steve Brown’s personal collection of Geddington memorabilia. We are just waiting to load the photographs to match the descriptors and hope that everyone will be able to enjoy these images of Geddington past.
David Valentine, who lived in the village in his early years and knows it well because he delivered the bread on a daily basis to many of the families, was kind enough to give up some of his time to help us plan a village tour (virtual and real), complete with anecdotes and additional information from the earlier years of the 20th century. That project is not yet complete and we would welcome anyone who might be interested in helping with it getting in touch.
Following on from the project done at Geddington School and as the anniversary of the end of The Great War approaches, the website team are planning a small event on 4th November where we would like to exhibit those records we have of life at the time and, of course, of those men and women who took an active part in the field of war. If you have any letters or memorabilia of any kind that you would be happy to share, please get in touch with Pam 742292 or Janet 726416 or via the Contact Us link on the home page.
Do you know someone who does not use the website and would like to? Look out for a session soon on ‘Finding your way around geddington.net’ for those who may be unfamiliar with the set up.
We have decided to hold our AGM this year on 12th April at 7:00pm in The Star. Formal business will be brief and will be followed from 7:30pm by an open invitation to all our contributors and representatives from village organisations, indeed anyone with an interest in the website, to join us so that we can discuss the future style, content and activities of the website to best serve the village community.
We hope you have enjoyed what we have presented to you over the year; we hope you will continue to use the website and spread the word. If you can’t make 12th April, but want to pass on ideas or comments please use the Contact Us link. Best of all come along and have a chat with us on 12th April – we would appreciate hearing your ideas.
Happy Easter to you all.
The Website Team