Thank you for supporting this year’s Midsummer Festival. Please find some images and poems from the festival on the following links. If you have enjoyed the festival you can still make a donation for local causes here.

Festival Pictures – Nick Malden

Fun Fest Pop-up photo studio – Paul Bullivant

Poetry Evening poems

Music Night Pictures – Paul Bullivant

St Peter’s Fete Pop-up Studio – Paul Bullivant

The Wolvercote & Wytham Midsummer Festival starts today with a History Talk at the Baptist Church Hall at 7.30 on Friday 21st June. ‘Fair Rosamund – Myth and Reality’. Refreshments will be served in the Hall from 6.30pm featuring the “Fair Rosamund” cocktail. Donations welcome.

Full details of all the events can be found here Wolvercote & Wytham Midsummer Festival 2024 – Wolvercote.org

And you can download a programme from here 2024-Programme.pdf (wolvercote.org)

Your mission in the 2024 Festival Treasure Hunt is to identify the ten numbered locations of these images ‘Now and Then’, all of which are accessible on foot via public rights of way or common land in Wolvercote and Wytham.

A map can be found here on which you can mark the numbers of the images in the location you have chosen.

For each picture, there are two questions: ‘Where is this now? ‘ and ‘What was it then?’

The 2024 Festival Treasure Hunt is just for fun but if you would like to receive an answer sheet, please email events@wolvercote.org.

Good luck and enjoy exploring our villages on foot. Many thanks to Amanda Saville for putting this together on behalf of the Festival Committee.

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Oxford Preservation Trust

Poetry & Music Evening

Wolvercote and Wytham Midsummer Festivalis on 21–30 June 2024.

This year the Festival theme is ‘Now and Then’, comparing and contrasting our lives and environment over the years.

We are looking for local poets to contribute one or two poems and join us for a convivial evening of readings, music, and wine in a lovely setting.

The Poetry & Music Evening will be held on Monday 24th June.

Time:  7.30-9.30
Venue:  St. Peter’s Church Rooms

with access to a very pleasant outdoor courtyard, good for a sunny evening.

Please send by June 1stone or two of your poems on this year’s theme to: Ros Bleach at bleachfamily@hotmail.com and Phillipa Hardman at phillipa.hardman@virginmedia.com

On Friday 20th October, after months of delay, the lawyers at Cala Homes finally transferred ownership of the building to Wolvercote.
Come and look around The Mill – we’re holding an Open Event on Sunday, the 29th, from 11 to 3 pm. Bring a cake to share and we’ll have coffee, tea and squash on offer.
www.thewolvercotemill.org

Good news for the people of Wolvercote. We will soon have a brand new building belonging to our local community! 

As part of the planning agreement for the old paper mill, CALA Homes were obliged to provide Wolvercote with a ‘community facility’. So, they will soon hand over their former sales office – a bright, two-storey building and courtyard garden situated at the entrance to the new development, just beside the White Hart pub. 

How will the building be managed? After conducting a survey of 300 households and holding a series of public meetings and workshops, a working group evolved of residents of Wolvercote Mill and the surrounding area. The group has now formed a Charitable Community Benefit Society (CBS) to take ownership of the building. This means that the building is now a community asset. Moreover, the organisation is democratic and accountable and welcomes any local resident to join the group and vote at the AGM or stand as a member of the steering group. 

The plan is to open this month (the CBS is currently waiting for the lawyers to agree a completion date), offering affordable room hire for your events and parties, a pop-up cafe, co-working, group meet-ups and more. 

The vision is to provide a vibrant, open-hearted and flexible space that welcomes, connects and nurtures everyone in our community, whoever you are, whatever your interests. 

This is the beginning of our journey. We’re looking forward to discovering the best uses of this building for our community, working together with all local residents, groups and organisations. If you are interested in getting involved, booking a room or just want to find out more, visit www.thewolvercotemill.org or email info@thewolvercotemill.org.

Once we have a completion date, we will also be organising an open house so you can visit us for a cuppa, cake and tour of the building. Watch this space!

Celebrating 20 years of the Festival in Wolvercote and Wytham. See the first 2003 programme.

The Wolvercote and Wytham Midsummer Festival Anniversary Bench has been a long time in the planning, designing, implementing and installing, but here it is unveiled by one of our dearest village treasures, Sheila Pargeter*, one of the Festival’s founders 20 years ago.   Also enjoying the rustic charm is Charlotte Fenton who suggested the idea in the first place. Huge thanks to our festival Chair, Teresa Woodbridge who organized the funding and kept nudging the project to its final reality. This could not have happened without the generous help from Julian Cooper and his Oxford Direct Services (ODS) team who provided the large and characterful piece of oak and installed the bench.  Thanks too must be given to artist, Richard Fox, who turned a drawing by Jo Malden into a wonderfully sculpted engraving representing the festival logo with flying goose and bunting. You may notice the Wolvercote Community Market logo in the left-hand corner which is in recognition of their kind donation towards the project, and the crown that you will find in the right-hand corner is a nod to this historical coronation year.

Please sit and tarry a while on this bench if you are passing.

*Follow this link to read Sheila’s unveiling speech which describes the history and formation of the festival 20 years ago.

Here is the running order for Fun on the Green 17th June 2023