It’s easy. You don’t have to have special powers. Just go on St Hilda’s East’s sponsored walk in the afternoon of 23rd July. They are holding the walk around the area to celebrate 120 years of the community centre, and they have constructed it so that you can walk anything – from 50 metres up. The only thing they are aiming for is that when all the amounts walked by people are added up at the end of the day, they come to 120 kilometres!
St Hilda’s was around when the Boundary was built, and is 21 years older than the Arnold Circus bandstand. The walk marks their birthday, but is also of course a means to raise money for the centre (they have teamed with the Friends over a number of projects), to enable them to go on for another 120 years. You can find out full details, register and/or donate on their website.
The dig is done. All that’s needed now is for the Museum of London to fill up the trench and replace the bench.
Their website has a vivid account of what went on, day by day – who found what, and if the bones that emerged really were – as Year 1 children claimed – from a dead dinosaur.
The Museum people have agreed to come to the Picnic on July 26th with their finds. So come along, and view the evidence of Boundary’s past in the present.
The New Cambridge Boys came to visit Arnold Circus on Sunday 28th June. They came to see the restored bench that they had so kindly funded. They could not fail to see the graffiti on the bench but it did not seem to matter as they shared memories and family news. In particular, they remembered the club they had all belonged to when they lived on the Boundary. ‘It changed our lives,’ said one of them. If the photo below had sound you would hear them singing their old club song. It was memorable and moving occasion for those of us who met them.
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A reminder to put JULY 26th in your diary!
This year it’s going to be a grand combination of the Carrom Championship, the brass band and other music, and the Sharing Picnic.
Plus icecream, games, displays and the ever-popular thrilling challenge to cycle one hundred times round Arnold Circus.
So get cooking, get fit and get down here.
2pm – 8pm
(and if you’d like to volunteer to help behind the scenes for just part of the day, then contact Alix 07985 713458, fidalix@gmail.com)
The dig has gone on, and miscomprehensions got sorted out. The hole has got deeper – around a metre or so – which is as far as it’ll go.
The finds have been really moving. Small pairs of shoes belonging to children from a hundred years ago. Old coins. A stone bottle that held mineral water and was marked with the name of Italian immigrants based on City Road and who are in the 1883 Census. Broken china and clay pipes.
Shoes, pipes and china going back over a hundred years
Every child from Virginia School came up to have a go this week, and so the women’s group from St Hilda’s enthusiastically got down to see what they could find.
We hope that the Museum will have a presence at the Picnic on July 26th so that they can show everybody what came to light from the area’s long-gone past. .
