BROAD TOWN NEWS SEPTEMBER 2026
Keeping everyone in touch with what is going on in and around our parish.
FOOD BANK 29th & 30th August. Please drop off unused items at the Village Hall. Thank you for your generosity in supporting people in need.
LOCAL POLICING TEAM will be at the village Hall Wednesday 16th September 10am to 11:30am
CONGRATULATIONS to Matthew and his Aunt Jules for raising an astonishing £9,702.75 for Prospect Hospice. Matthew cycled over 800 miles in memory of his father (James Harvey-Samuel).
HOP CHAPEL BANK HOLIDAY Friday 28th August Film Night, Saturday 29th August disco night, Sunday 30th August Jazz in the afternoon by a local Musician.
MADE IN BROAD TOWN Broad Town 100 Project Photos – please email us your photos by the 31st August - £20 Garden Gift Card to be won!
We hope everyone has enjoyed having a go at growing seeds and trying to increase wildlife and plant diversity in their gardens this summer. Please email us photos of any wildlife friendly displays of flowers, plants, ponds etc in your gardens, or around the village, all contributors will be entered into a prize draw to win a £20 garden gift voucher!
It doesn’t matter whether you received our free seeds earlier in the summer or not, we are looking for any bright and colourful photos which represent our village as wildlife friendly. Photos including wildlife such as insects or wild animals would be particularly welcome. Photos should be emailed to: mailto:madeinbroadtown@gmail.com
N.B. if these photos include people that’s great but please only send them if you are happy for these photos to be used in our village hall display and photobook. Thank you. Photos will be displayed during the village hall Macmillan Coffee Morning on Saturday September 26th.
Sad news…
We are all mourning the loss of our co-founder Linda Boyden who passed away earlier this month. Linda was the inspiration behind our group, and it was her determination and creative ideas that got the group off the ground in April 2023. I know that many of us have had a go at crafts we would never have attempted without her encouragement, so we will always be grateful to her for her enthusiasm and her positivity. She was also a very valued member of the Community Coffee Mornings team.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to Mark, their children and grandchildren. Linda has left the village a legacy that we will strive to nurture, and she will be so sadly missed by us all.
Summer holiday sessions
Our two August sessions were very well attended, and we had between 30 and 40 adults and children at both sessions, enjoying all the creative seaside and nature themed activities we had organised. It was lovely to see the village hall become such a hive of multigenerational activity.
September dates: Wednesdays 2nd, 16th & 30th, in the village hall from 10 – 12 noon, please just turn up. We ask for a £2 contribution towards costs, but this is voluntary and your first visit is free.
Please note that on September 16th the Police Mobile Engagement van will be in the village hall car park, so if you are visiting the van, you would be very welcome to come into the village hall for a cup of coffee or tea, and biscuits. We look forward to seeing you.
Please email us if you have any questions madeinbroadtown@gmail.com, we would love to hear from you
THOMAS SPACKMAN EDUCATIONAL TRUST Are you, or do you know, a young person living in the Clyffe Pypard or Broad Town area who would benefit from The Thomas Spackman Educational Trust? The charity’s main focus is education or work-related training and apprenticeships, but the charity may also be able to help a promising individual develop a particular talent. Applying is very easy. If you wish to find out more about the application process, please contact Rosemary Greenway or email: spackmantrust@gmail.com. All formal applications need to be in by 30th Sept for the autumn round of awards.
BROAD HINTON YOUTH CLUB Come and join our youth club!
We meet every Friday from 7:00pm until 9:00pm during term-time in Broad Hinton Village Hall.
The club is for 10-14 year olds and the cost is £3 per session (plus tuck shop money!). New members are always very welcome. We have table tennis, table football, a snooker table, an indoor net for badminton or volley ball, a PS4 and an Xbox, as well as a tuck shop. We sometimes have other activities such as art and craft or different sports. During the summer months we have use of the school field behind the village hall for outdoor activities. Please visit our webpage on the Broad Hinton Village Hall website: https://broadhinton.org.uk/clubs/youth-club
COMMUNITY COFFEE MORNING Open coffee morning, new people especially welcome – September 9th
We hope you all had an enjoyable summer break. Our next coffee morning will be on Wednesday September 9th, we look forward to seeing all our regulars again, and we would particularly love to see anyone who hasn’t been along before.
Whether you’re new to the village, or you’ve perhaps just been thinking of coming along for a while, please join us and give coffee mornings a try, you will be made to feel very welcome and we would be delighted to see you in the village hall from 10am – 12 noon, to enjoy our delicious homemade cakes, sausage rolls and hot & cold drinks.
Our second coffee morning in September will be on Wednesday 23rd, also from 10 - 12 noon. If you have any questions please email Helen, at hjgreer1@gmail.com.
Macmillan Coffee Morning Saturday September 26th Please support our fundraising coffee morning in the village hall in aid of Macmillan (see below). Every penny raised will be helping Macmillan to enable people with cancer live life as fully as they can by providing physical, emotional and financial support to patients, their families and their carers.
BISHOP’s LETTER
September always brings a change of rhythm. Children and young people head back to school or off to college for the first time. Holidays end, routines return, and the light begins, almost imperceptibly, to soften and shorten.
It can be a season of mixed feelings. For some, there is real hope: new classrooms, new opportunities, new beginnings. For others, there is nervousness — a new school, a new job, a step into the unknown. Some of us mourn the passing of long summer evenings and find the turning of the year quietly sorrowful. Others long for the crispness of autumn, the cooler days and fresher nights.
Both responses are honest, and both are welcome. Change can be exciting, full of promise. It can also be disorientating, even painful, carrying its own small grief.
The sixteenth-century saint Ignatius of Loyola encouraged Christians to seek "God in all things" — not just in church or in prayer, but in the ordinary texture of daily life. Noticing God, for Ignatius, was less about looking for the extraordinary and more about paying attention: to what stirs us, what unsettles us, what draws us closer to life and love.
That practice of attention feels well-suited to September. The changing of the seasons, in nature and in our lives, can be a place to notice God. In the dimming evening light and the turning leaves, in anticipation and hope, and equally in anxiety and loss, God is present. The Psalms are full of this same honesty — praise and lament sitting side by side, often in the very same breath.
So perhaps this September, whatever this new season holds for you, it's worth pausing each day to ask, as Ignatius might: where do I see God breaking through today?
Whatever changes around us, we hold to this promise: seasons turn, circumstances shift, but God does not change — and God does not leave us to face the turning alone. This is the heart of the ancient Celtic tradition of prayer, echoed in the ancient breastplate prayer attributed to St Patrick, which speaks of Christ
CHRIST CHURCH
Here are the service dates for September :
13th September 10.30 Morning Worship
20th September 10.30 Communion (Please note change of date)
Everyone is welcome.
Harvest Festival 27th September 5pm Tea followed by the service at 6. All welcome. Donations of tinned food welcome; these will be donated to the local food bank.
The Bric-a-brac Stall in Royal Wootton Bassett scheduled for the 9th September has had to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. We are looking at scheduling a replacement event later in the year.
SOCIAL CLUB
The social club is open every Friday from 8pm and members and their guests are all welcome. If you are not a member you can join for just £3.00 for the year - just ask Trevor behind the bar. Draught beers and lagers are for sale at just £3.50 a pint and there is a free pool table, so why not pop in and check us out. Find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FourWaysBroadTown
Food for Thought Fish & Chips
Food for Thought will be selling their delicious Fish and Chips (and burgers, sausages, scampi etc) outside the Village Hall from 5 – 8pm on the last Friday in the month:
28 th August – This Friday !
25 th September
30 th October
The Social Club and bar will be open from 5pm on these Fridays so why not pop in and enjoy a drink while you are waiting for your supper !
PARISH COUNCIL
Keep up to date at https://www.broadtownparishcouncil.org.uk
Flooding Preparations
The Parish Council has some Gel Bags which can be used in place of sandbags. Gel bags are lightweight bags filled with a water-absorbing polymer. When exposed to water they expand and act like a sandbag. They are very lightweight before use and easy to store and transport. They expand in minutes on contact with water and can be stacked like sandbags.
Contact the Parish Clerk if you would like some clerk@broadtownparishcouncil.org.uk
Household Recycling Centres – pilot booking scheme from 14th September
Wiltshire Council is launching a pilot booking system for six of its Household Recycling Centres (Devizes, Lower Compton, Melksham, Purton, Salisbury, Stanton St Quintin) starting on Monday 14 September 2026. You can book slots up to one week in advance via https://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/article/20130/Household-Recycling-Centre-Booking-System-Pilot or by calling the council’s rubbish and recycling line if you cannot go online.
Community Fund Advisory Group vacancy
We would like to thank Jackie Jordan who has sat on the advisory group since its inception in 2019 for her valuable help and guidance over the years.
We desperately need volunteers to sit on the Advisory Group. The Advisory Group is made up of people in the village who review grant applications and then make recommendations to the Parish Council (who remain legally responsible for the management of the fund). This allows different views to be expressed and provides an element of separation from the Parish Council. Applications are considered via email and if necessary the group requests more details before arriving at a consensus to make a recommendation. If you would like to be part of this group and play a key role in helping community ideas get the funding they need then please contact the Parish Clerk clerk@broadtownparishcouncil.org.uk.
The next Parish Council meeting will be at 6.30pm in the village hall on 14 th September. All are welcome and the agenda will be posted on our website and on the notice boards in due course..
PLEASE NOTE that all copy to be included in the next edition should be emailed to: BroadTownNews@gmail.com by the 22nd of EVERY month. Any queries should also be sent to this address.