A club for retired or semi-retired local professional and business managers
Double Chains of Office with Mayoral Visit to Probus Club
The Worshipful, The Mayor of Basingstoke & Deane, Cllr Colin Phillimore, was the guest of honour at the first meeting of the new season of the Probus Club of Basingstoke, which is entering its 46th year of activity.
Before lunch the mayor outlined his background, growing up in Whitchurch and attending Basingstoke’s Queen Mary’s grammar school, his first job at aged 16 at the Basingstoke headquarters of AA on £7 per week and then forty years in accountancy in the motor trade.
Cllr Phillimore has been the ward councillor for Whitchurch for ten years and has nominated the Whitchurch Community swimming pool as one of his mayoral charities, even though a non-swimmer, and St Michael’s Hospice, that needs £15,000 a day to cover its costs.
The Probus Club was pleased to make a donation towards the mayor’s charity appeal.
The other guest at this meeting was speaker Jackie Dimmock who reminisced about her lengthy career as a WPC in the Hampshire Police Force. She gave many examples of her experiences, some serious, others amusing, in a varying service in Scenes of Crime, working with Children’s Services and for many years as a Schools’ Liaison officer.
The Probus Club of Basingstoke is a club for retired men who had some management experience in the professions or business, hence the acronym Probus. Interested? Then see www.probusbasingstoke.club for more information or phone their secretary Andrew Barton for an informal chat on 07814 937202.
The appointment of the new committee of the Probus Club of Basingstoke was covered by the usual supporting magazines around Basingstoke. The exception was the Loddon Valley Link in Sherfield on Loddon and I failed to see if the Basingstoke Gazette carried our report.
The Bramley magazine also carried a separate report about the funeral of Fred Locke and used part of our photograph when Fred was installed as President in 2016.
SELF-DRIVE TRIP TO KINGSTON LACY – Report by Stephen Thair
Seventeen members and guests enjoyed an excellent day out to the National Trust property at Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne in Dorset on 26th June. Unfortunately Chris Perkins who had kindly organised the expedition, was indisposed and unable to go.
The House dates mostly from the 1700-1800s and is a “nice size” and set in attractive grounds and gardens. The Bankes family who had owned the estate before donating it to the National Trust had furnished the house with many paintings, including some by Rubens and Titian. One member of the Bankes family had lived in Venice, and sent back paintings and furniture from Italy, including a painted ceiling – the painting (on canvas) dates from the 1600s and was purchased in Italy, taken down from its original location, and shipped to England and then fixed to the ceiling of one of the rooms in the house.
There are two singularly unpleasant paintings each side of the magnificent staircase, which were apparently previously hung in the dining room, and would not have been conducive to enjoyable dining!
Not far from the House is a large stable block which in the best NT tradition, now has the café in it, and some of us gravitated there initially for a coffee.
The grounds include a splendid Japanese Garden, which has a Tea Garden within it.
There are four decorated boxes on poles as you go through the garden, and they contain postcards and stamps (not postage) and ink so you can make your own small Japanese-style painting as you proceed through by stamping your card at each box.
After passing through the Japanese Garden, you reach the kitchen garden which is very extensive with a lot of greenhouses and a café, and must have produced large quantities of vegetables for the big house in its day.
There was plenty to see and enjoy and thanks go to Chris Perkins for arranging the trip.
Stephen Thair
Probus Club of Basingstoke 
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