The Wokingham Society has the immense good fortune of a legacy from one-time resident Isobel Elliston Clifton to ‘do good around the town’. A major use we make of this bequest is to award grants to projects which, for example, seek ‘to secure the preservation, protection, development and improvement of features of historic or public interest’ in the town of Wokingham.
An early grant was given to the Wokingham Bowls Club towards the rebuilding of the clubhouse at one of Berkshire’s finest bowling clubs and also to provide a trophy for annual award to commemorate Isobel Elliston Clifton, who was a founder member of the club.
St Crispin’s School benefitted from two grants which assisted the recovery of two murals and the re-creation of a third. The murals, painted by renowned artist Fred Millett in the 1950s when the new school opened, represented Spring, Summer and Autumn. They, together with one illustrating Winter which could not be restored, had been repeatedly painted over in the 1960s and 1970s in a desire to concentrate on progress rather than the past.
A grant to All Saints Church contributed to the building and furnishing of the Cornerstone , a community hall to house a number of charities (including the Berkshire Counselling Service and the Wokingham Job Support Centre) and to offer accommodation facilities for leisure, recreational, educational and other pursuits for the community.
.The establishment of the Friends of the Emm Brook was helped by a grant supporting its aim of maintaining and improving Wokingham’s only river.
Wokingham Art Society was helped by a grant towards the cost of installing The Queen’s diamond jubilee frieze on the approach to Wokingham railway station while, more recently, Wokingham Choral Society was given a grant which contributed to new staging and the purchase of a new keyboard amplifier to enable the Society to perform choral concerts in All Saints Church and St Paul’s Church.
In the field of publications we have contributed grants to a series of booklets about Emmbrook’s history by the Residents’ Association’s Peter Shilham; to .the U3A’s book on Late Victorian Wokingham; and to local historian Paul King’s record of Wokingham Market Place 1900-2019.
We have been pleased to support long-standing annual events in the town, like the May Fayre, the Winter Carnival and the Fireworks in Cantley Park, as well as Wokingham in Bloom.
The Society is always happy to receive grant applications from organisations or individuals who need assistance to achieve a project related to the town, its past, its development or its culture.
Please look on our website https://www.wokinghamsociety.org.uk/grants.html, where you will find details of past grants, the conditions involved and an application form.
Peter Must, Chairman, the Wokingham Society.
