We had a very useful meeting with South East Water in the Village Hall on Thursday 25th April and a lot of Brightling people turned up to hear about the new water main and associated road closures. The map below shows the extent of the new water main, and what we currently know about the dates of road closures. You can click on this map to view it full scale.

The first closure will be the bottom of Rectory Hill, between Brightling Place Cottage and Oxley’s Green.  That road will be closed between 7th May and 13th May, and again from 22nd May to 5th June.  The most disruptive road closure is likely to be the Brightling Road between Oxleys Green and Brightling Place Farm, particularly for rail commuters and deliveries from the A21 direction.  This patch of road will be closed from 13th to 22nd May and then again for 3 days starting on 5th June.

When a road is closed it will be closed round the clock.  They say that they have found that closing a road during working hours and then opening it overnight just causes massive confusion.

Your water supply may be cut off.  Each property will suffer a maximum of 3 cut-offs and each cut-off will last no longer than 3 hours.  You will be notified in advance by card through your door.  This may specify a 6-hour window, eg “you will be cut off for a maximum of 3 hours between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm”

More detail on the exact timing of closures will emerge as the work progresses.  We will endeavour to update this web site with important changes.

(Some people have asked why the rest of Brightling Road is not being upgraded, only the short stretch from Oxley’s Green to Brightling Place Farm.  The answer is that the vast majority of the actual bursts have not been along this stretch; the residents have suffered the consequences of bursts elsewhere.  They have sent me a map that shows quite dramatically that nearly all the bursts are along Hollingrove Hill/Lane and between Twelve Oaks and Darwell Hole).

There are 7 seats on Brightling Parish Council and 6 people stood, so we all got elected without needing a vote. On a somewhat melancholy note, I have to record that David Gasson and Chris French both decided not to stand again. David Gasson had been on the Parish Council for 40 years, he tells me, and of course he was chairman for many years – so this is literally a lifetime of service, for which the village should be extremely grateful. The same applies to Chris French, who has been on the Parish Council for some 36 years, and for many years has served as deputy chairman.. Chris’s extensive local knowledge and wise advice will be greatly missed by the council.

The first meeting of the new Parish Council will be on Monday 13^th May 2019. As always, the meeting will be at 7:30 am in the Village Hall and is open to the public, who are encouraged (but not forced) to participate. This will be our AGM (Annual General Meeting), which means that we will be choosing a chairman and deputy chairman for the year, as well as other responsibilities.

The 6 parish councillors are (in alphabetical order of surname): Caroline Croft, Daniel Lambert-Gorwyn, Jane Oxenford, Judy Petty, Andrew Wedmore, Roddy Wrenn, Judy Petty is new to the Parish Council, though not new to Brightling. Welcome, and thank you for agreeing to serve.

Readers with a degree in advanced arithmetic will have noticed that with 7 seats and 6 people, there is a vacancy for one more person. We do have the ability to “co-opt” to make up the numbers, so don’t be surprised if you see press-gangs roaming the streets of Brightling, looking for “volunteers”. Seriously, if you are interested in joining the Parish Council, do make yourself known to me or any parish councillor (contact details here).

Elections to Rother District Council take place on Thursday 2 May 2019.

The polling station for the parish of Brightling is the Village Hall.  It is open for voting between 7:00 am and 10:00 pm

You have two votes but you don’t have to use them both.

The full list of candidates for the “Burwash & The Weald” ward is as follows:

This was held on Monday 8^th April and was quite well-attended although I think numbers were down a bit on the previous year. Those who did attend got a glass or two of wine, or soft drink, some high quality nibbles to nibble, and a really good opportunity to natter to their neighbours and fellow-parishioners.

After the nibbling and nattering we had a talk from Inspector Jonny Hartley of Sussex Police and he dealt with a number of questions from his audience, particularly about the difficulties of communicating with the police. Whether one would be happy with his answers I had best leave to others to judge.

Then we had an informative talk from our tree warden, Mr Doug Edworthy, about the formation of the “Brightling Tree Group”, with the aim of properly investigating and documenting the woods and trees of the parish, and also about Poppy, the rare female black poplar, who is thriving but will soon be yearning for a mate. (Unlike the majority of tree species, the black poplar is dioeceous. meaning that individual trees are either wholly male or wholly female, and – without going into the gory details – you need one of each to get fertile seed. Fertilization is by wind, so the male needs to be within reasonable distance of the female).

The official dates for road closure are:

• Hollingrove Lane (Twelve Oaks to Hollingrove triangle) 5 July to 20 December 2019;
• Hollingrove Hill (Hollingrove Triangle to Oxley’s Green): 10 June to December 2019;
• Cackle Street (Twelve Oaks to the Darwell Hole cross-roads) 5 July to 20 December 2019;
• Rectory Hill 7 May to 9 June; Brightling Road (Oxley’s Green area) 7 May to 9 June 2019.

Will all these roads be closed for all this time? Probably not – experience shows that companies tend to “over-book” roadwork slots so as to be on the safe side – but who knows? “Access to properties will be maintained” we are told, but this means that you can access your property from one end of the road or the other but not necessarily both, so you may have to go the long way round – and it could be quite long. Take, for example, the official diversion route for the Brightling Road closure. If you want to go from (say) the Rectory to Swallowfield Farm, the official advice is that you should drive through Netherfield towards Battle, then on the outskirts of Battle, turn left and go down the A21 to Robertsbridge, and then in Robertsbridge take the Brightling Road. In case anyone thinks it’s still 1^st April, you can verify this for yourself: the official diversion route can be found on-line by visiting this southeast water web page and then clicking on “Diversion route for phase 1”. It sounds very silly indeed, until you think “where else could they officially divert via?” It would be absolute chaos if they tried to send people down Brickyard Lane and Fontridge Lane.

Questions have been asked as to how far down Brightling Road the new water main will go. The map on the roadworks.org web site (whence the above information was taken) suggests that it will be just 180 metres (ie only as far as The Forge or thereabouts). The official description for this section of work is “Lay 180 metres of new drinking water main with associated services and connect to existing main – Works in conjunction with EB007-18545404/1, EB007-18545402/1 and EB007-18545401/1” Unfortunately even the world’s most powerful search engine knows nothing of these references. Therefore we don’t know to what extent, if at all, these works will benefit the rest of Brightling Road.

This was brought up at the recent Annual Parish Meeting, and we offered to try and get a representative from South East Water to come and talk to us about the work, at our meeting on 13^th May (see above). At the time of writing, the parish clerk has contacted South East Water but has yet to get a reply. However I am quite hopeful that we will get someone. If a meeting is arranged it will, of course, be posted on the web site at brightling.community.

Message from Jenny Yeo:

to remind you that it was decided that the Church, including the organ loft,  needed a thorough Spring clean before Easter.  The date decided was Wednesday 17th April at 6.30pm.  She hopes you can come, even for a short time – many hands make light work.  Bring your marigolds and any polish you think may be useful and she is very much hoping that the gentlemen might provide some refreshments!

I wonder which gentlemen they might be!

Thank you.

 

The annual litter-pick, organized by David Gasson, will take place on Saturday, 13th April 2019.

If you would like to take part, please meet up outside the Village Hall (TN32 5HH) at 9:00 am and bring black bags and gloves.

If you cannot make that day but would still like to take part, please ring David on 01424 838481 and he will allocate you an area to clear.

Then on Monday 8th April, at 7:30 pm in the Village Hall we have the annual parish meeting. Do put this date in your diary now, if it is not already there.

We will be continuing the practice of the last few years of making this a social (or sociable) occasion by providing refreshments (hard and soft drinks) and snacks, and running the meeting in a fairly informal way. Basically it is our annual “state of the Village” review. I’ll give a brief (really brief, I promise) report on what the parish council has been up to, and there is an opportunity to put questions to parish councillors, make suggestions, and give feedback about things that we might do to improve and develop the life of the village. There will be reports from various village organizations but we don’t force people to read these out loud: copies will be available to be perused during the meeting, and published on the website afterwards. If nothing else, it is an opportunity to have a drink and a chat with your neighbours. I look forward to seeing you there.

Andrew Wedmore

People often ask me: “What is Brightling’s position on Brexit?”, and I am happy to make this clear.

In fact Brightling’s policy on Brexit has always been very clear.  We are opposed to both a “hard” and a “soft” Brexit, preferring a position that gets the best of both.

A simple analogy should make this clear.  If you imagine that Brexit was a boiled egg, we would want the white to be nice and hard ( no disgusting watery bits) but the yolk to be soft and runny.

A major advantage of our policy is that it would only take about 4 minutes to implement.  And, unlike the present lot, we wouldn’t make a meal of it – more of a light snack in fact.

We can only hope that the whole country now rallies behind Brightling’s leadership on this matter.  Meanwhile, in the wise words of Siobhan Sharpe of W1A “We are where we are with this guys. And that’s never a good place to be”

Wishing all our readers a happy April 1st.

Following intervention by the Parish Council, much of Brightling is going to be getting a new water main.

The new pipe will run all the way between Darwell Hole and the top of Rectory Hill, along Rectory Hill through Oxley’s Green and along Brightling Road, and also along Hollingrove Hill and Hollingrove Lane. Work to install the new pipe will start in May 2019.

It will be a 100 mm (4 inches in old money) pipe, which is a good size. I expect it to greatly reduce the occurence of incidents such as leaks, brown water, and problems with pressure being too low or too high, for properties along these routes – not to mention the recent outage (on Sunday 17 March 2019 parts of Brightling were without water for 19 hours).

The bad news is that there will be some serious road closures along these routes, lasting many months, possibly until Christmas. I will post more details of the timing of these a bit nearer the time..