Happy New Year to everyone!
The year of 2015 went just as quickly as all the others for us at Whitwell Hall! The season came and went in a blur. Many camp fires had by both staff and our groups both school and private. Along with work completed around the hall and estate, most of which goes unnoticed as it is just to keep Whitwell Hall, as we know it.
The ‘new’ group of Reepham High School and College students, working toward their CoPE, award have done a brilliant job as always. Jobs such as re-wiring the kissing gate and vehicle gates onto the meadows, dismantling a bridge ready to rebuild in 2016, brash clearing on the site and they couldn’t go without a few fires along the way! Both groups, year 10’s and year 11’s finished 2015 on a high with the Whitwell Hall annual Christmas meal for some of the elderly residents of Reepham and users of Reepham Patient Care Fund. The year 11’s prepared and cooked a three course meal with all the trimmings overseen by John, while the year 10’s ran the front of house and service with the help of Matt (although how much help Matt was, is debatable!). Next year the year 10’s get to try the kitchen work out and the ‘new’ year 10’s will be front of house. The new year holds lots more jobs for both groups both inside and out.
2015 started with four Red Squirrel kittens born around Easter weekend and we are hopeful that Bracken and Cobb, the two resident adult Red Squirrels, will breed again. More kittens will enable the East Anglian Red Squirrel Program, of which Whitwell is part of, to help other captive breeding and re-introduction programs around the UK. They start the year with a Christmas tree in their enclosure decorated with fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds. We will see how they like it!
Before we know it, the 2016 school season will be upon us and then into the summer camp groups.
