PRESIDENT Jim Cox opened our meeting on Thursday February, 19 – his last as President. He thanked members for their support and said how much he had enjoyed his happy term of office. Our President for the next twelve months, Brian Melville, takes over at next week’s annual general meeting.

Our speaker this week was our Treasurer, Bill Underwood, whose topic was ‘Evesham - then and now’. He explained that he has lived in Evesham for 16 years, was secretary of the Historical Society and takes a keen interest in the history of the town. He paid tribute to Tony Whiting, the former manager of the Evesham Almonry Heritage Centre for the work he had done to promote Evesham.

Bill showed a wide variety of slides of some of the main roads and features of the town. What made his presentation so outstanding was that he was able to show recent photographs alongside the early ones so that we could immediately see what changes there had been. It was fascinating to see early photos of the 1907 wedding of French royalty, the two railway stations, the site of the Catholic church pre 1912, as well as the views of the busy market days, complete with horses and carts loaded with local produce. He also showed early slides of the town square, Merstow Green, Bridge Street, Port Street and Vine Street as well as all the other easily recognisable buildings and shops. Many of the features were very familiar to George Bourne and others whilst for our relative new-comers, it was amazing to see how busy the town had been in times gone by.

Jim Cox thanked Bill for a fascinating insight into the history of our town and recalled his pleasure in visiting the cinema and dance hall in the early 1950s.

We shall have our AGM on February 26 and then on March 5, Paul Hickley will describe ‘operating the Vulcan’.

CHRIS DONOUGH