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  • Home
  • About U3A
  • INTEREST GROUPS
    • Art Group
    • AHA
    • Beginners Bridge Group
    • Floral Art
    • French Conversation
    • Genealogy Group
    • History Group
    • Lunch Club
    • Mah Jong
    • MOTO Group
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    • Reading Group 1
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A-HA Visit to Clandon Park and Hatchlands Park

25/4/2019

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In April members of the Group travelled to the Guildford area to visit two National Trust properties. The first was Clandon Park, which you will probably recall that the house was badly damaged by fire in 2015.
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​ The National Trust has undertaken a restoration project to restore the principal rooms to their original 18th century design, and the upper floor to be modernised to hold exhibitions and events. Restoration to date has concentrated on stabilising the surviving structures and enclosing the whole building with 32 miles of scaffolding, with sheeting to protect it from the weather.  Members were surprised at just seeing a skeleton of the original structure. This prompted some debate on the value of restoring such badly damaged buildings. ​ However, they had to concede that the restoration was probably conditional on the terms of the insurance claim.
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​The group then travelled a few miles to another National Trust property, Hatchlands Park. 
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After lunch we had an enjoyable walk around the bluebell woods and then proceeded to the house.  There were a limited number of rooms open to the public, which contained part of the Cobbe family collection of old masters and keyboard instruments. The paintings included works by Titian, van Dyck and Gainsborough; also of interest was an anonymous work that is claimed to be the only life portrait of Shakespeare. The exhibition of keyboard instruments included ones owned and played by famous composers including J.C. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Elgar and Chopin. The oldest instrument was a Harpsichord dating from 1622, and there was also a piano played by Marie Antoinette.  Most of the instruments are maintained in full working order and often played at recitals by leading pianists.  The visit was enhanced by an excellent and knowledgeable tour guide.
 
Don’t forget to look at U3A Anton website, to see what is coming up over the next few months!
 
BobTaylor & Rosemary Crumplin
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Questers' Visit to Home Bargains Distribution Centre

9/4/2019

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On Tuesday 9th April in very wet weather 17 intrepid Questers arrived at the impressive Home Bargains Distribution Centre at Solstice Park near Amesbury. We were greeted by the young Human Resources Director who gave us a very interesting introduction to TJ Morris Ltd - the parent company which is the largest independent grocer in the UK, selling fresh and frozen foods as well as household goods. Over 30% of their lines are end-of-range branded goods bought in bulk from the original manufacturers.

Headquartered in Liverpool and originally concentrated in Northern England, there are now nearly 600 Home Bargains stores around the country and in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The business is still privately owned and run, with three generations of the Morris family now in executive roles. The company does not advertise! Until 2015 all the distribution took place from Liverpool but due to the rapid expansion and success of the company the Amesbury centre was built to service the southern and western areas of the UK. The company is still growing rapidly and the Amesbury site has the capacity to deal with many additional stores as they come on stream. Currently they already service over 150 stores, from Penzance to Swansea to Great Yarmouth, with plans to grow this to 400 stores.
​After coffee we donned high visibility jackets for a fascinating tour led by a floor supervisor.
We were very impressed with the sophistication of the automated system of barcoded trolleys running on overhead rails which was designed, made and installed by a British company. Smaller items such as makeup, perfumes and DVDs are collected into baskets with packers being guided to the items required by headphones. These small boxes travel along roller tracks to meet up with the large trolleys in the loading bay. Each store receives ‘top up goods‘ daily and the lorries return with all the packing materials which are then crushed at Amesbury and dispatched to recycling centres. The volumes passing in and out of the 99 lorry loading bays are quite astonishing, for example they receive three articulated lorry loads of toilet rolls in to the warehouse every day! The Warehouse operates 24/7 and employs 750 staff.
 
We all enjoyed our visit which covered a mile of floor space and gave us an excellent overview of state of the art grocery distribution.
 
Jane Leishman

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