'Play by the Lake' is back

This year the amazing Jenny Wren Productions are returning with 'A Child in the Forest' - based on the true story of Winifred Foley's Forest of Dean childhood...

Photo: July 2007's play by the lake

'Few people visited the Forest of Dean. They thought us primitive, and looked down on us.' Winifred Foley grew up in the 1920s, a bright, determined miner's daughter in a world of unspoilt beauty and desperate hardship, in which women were widowed at thirty and children died of starvation. Living hand-to-mouth in a tumbledown cottage in the Forest of Dean, Foley - 'our Poll' - had a loving family and the woods and streams of a forest 'better than heaven' as a playground. But a brother and sister were dead in infancy, bread had to be begged from kindly neighbours and she never had a new pair of shoes or a shop-bought doll. And most terrible of all, like her sister before her, at fourteen little Poll had to leave her beloved forest for the city, bound for a life in service among London's grey terraces.'

Follow Poll as she grows from girl to her departure to work in service.....sadly Winifred passed away in Cheltenham this March aged 94. This looks set to be a treat - previous performances like 'The Importance of Being Earnest' have been very wonderful - and the setting is perfect in the open air by the Lake (bring blanket or chair) at Court Lodge in Randwick on Sat 18th and 19th July. Tickets are £8.50 (£6.50 concessions) from Smiths on 763485 and Sawyers Estate Agent on 751647. I am deeply disappointed that I will miss this event due to a conference that I've already booked to attend. However all you folks out there enjoy lots!!!