Welcome to The Wychwood On-Line

This is the site for The Wychwood Magazine, serving the communities of
The Wychwoods in the Cotswolds since 1980!
The magazine is published every two months, by the community for the community and our friends, with 68 pages, packed with features, articles, news and short stories
about life in the Wychwoods.

Latest issue: June – July 2020

Editorial

Many readers will remember 2007 as the year of the floods; most will remember 2008 as the year of the financial crisis; but everyone will remember 2020 as the year of the coronavirus. Our lives changed, perhaps for ever, but this issue of The Wychwood reflects on the past 40 years since the launch of the magazine as well as on the new challenges imposed by the virus. It truly is ancient and modern.
Our writers have excelled in producing articles that look back on the period of the magazine’s existence. We look back at changes in music, in drama, in church life and who can forget artex ceilings and avocado bathroom suites? All those are here.
But the Wychwoods lives for the present and not just for the past. Did you know that one resident ran a marathon up and down his garden path? Or that there was a record olive harvest in Shipton earlier this year? Or that Ascott has a veritable spider’s web of footpaths just waiting to be explored?
Our lives have been dominated by the virus and the attendant lockdown so this issue delves into the experiences of many of our readers. As our world closed in on itself, several of our writers give us their slant on the period. A doctor, a vicar, a resident at the Paddocks, a shop worker and several others tell of their experiences and of how their world changed.
The Wychwood truly is for the past and the present with, perhaps, some clues for the future.

Bob Forster, Editor

List of articles

40 years of memories
40 years of music in the Wychwoods
40 years of drama in the Wychwoods
Thanks for the memory
40 years in the life of the churches in the Wychwood Benefice
40 years in your home

Lockdown living
Exercise during lockdown
The Wychwood surgery – Dr Katy Walsh looks back
Rosie Dodds – a shop assistant’s view
Dee Loder – a local teacher and mother’s view
Geoffrey Clement – a vicar’s view
Eunice Austin – a Paddocks’ residents view
John Witts – a Wychwood Baptist’s perspective
The Hanney family – happy days in lockdown
Chores during the lockdown
Sounds of the lockdown
Cycling scenes during lockdown
Achievement during lockdown
Diversity through adversity
Our local shops during lockdown
Neighbourliness during the lockdown
Clothing in lockdown
Lesson from lockdown
Lockdown miscellany
Lockdown images

Other articles
The Gnomerunner heads up the garden path
Cricket in Ascott is re-born
A hair raising story
News from Fifield
Drama looks ahead
Ascott footpaths
Inside the ghost school
Milton parish council news
Margaret recommends
Shipton church fete
Olives – grown in Shipton
Summertime and the gardening is good
The other elephant

Obituaries
John Edwin Pratley
Gordon Matthews
Colin Pearce