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The Southam Gathering has been running about 25 years, and this is an attempt to document its history.
It was started by Wendy Crouch, assisted by Diana Lee, in 1995 and called "The Grand Union of Folk Dancers" weekend (it's held close to the Grand Union canal); they ran it until 2001 when Gill Swash and Chris Bower took over running the weekend and renamed it "The Southam Gathering". After the 2008 weekend they retired and handed it over to a committee of Denise and Norman Bearon, Jean and Paul Davis, and Peter and Jenny Smith. In 2014 Ruth and David Jeffery replaced Jean and Paul, in 2017 Corinna Tabor and Hugh Stewart replaced the Bearons and then in 2018 Andrea and Terry Stodell replaced the Jefferys.
We have used 6 halls over the years, originally the Grange (known as the "community hall") and St James' School which was more or less across the road from the Grange. The following year we added the Stoneythorpe Hotel Ballroom. We block-booked accommodation at this hotel and used it until 2003 when the hotel was sold (and renovated to become the Warwick Hotel) and we moved to the "Southam College". We continued to use the college until 2009 when we moved to the "Southam Primary School". In 2002 we moved from St James' school to the Graham Adams Centre.
Each year we send up to 5 documents to the dancers - an initial invitation / flyer, a receipt for ticket applications, and then a month or so before the weekend we send out a programme, accompanying notes, and a covering letter. We don't always send out all five documents (for example in 2018 we merged the programme notes into the programme itself), but where we can trace them here are copies of those documents for each year. If you can produce copies of ones not shown, or better quality originals please do. From 2009 onwards the programme and notes are "originals" rather than scanned from print-outs.
Note: in 2001/2 Dick was Dick Reed, Frances was Frances Richardson