The dominant activity of the Blackden Trust during September has been listening and discussing, and planning for the future of the Trust, mostly in online meetings.

We are very fortunate to have a dynamic group of friends and supporters who are actively looking for new ways of achieving the aims of The Blackden Trust. They range across the generations from university students to experienced adults and experts in many professions including heritage, education, arts and hospitality. We have been discussing the adaptations they have made in their various working environments and how these might be models for our future development.

The elderly Garners also work for the Trust.  Alan Garner is not a native of Goostrey, but he is among the oldest in-comers.  He came to live in the house, now known as Toad Hall, on 7th June 1957, five days before the Lovell telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory moved for the first time.  Griselda arrived five years later.

They have cared for the ancient site and the buildings on it ever since and they co-founded The Blackden Trust in 2004 to conserve the place as a legacy for future generations.  Since the first Coronavirus lockdown in March, they have been the only members of The Blackden Trust on site every day; the only caretakers. They have overseen the maintenance of the houses and garden.

One of the few visitors, who fulfilled the strict safety criteria adopted by the Garners, was Alfred Bradshaw, who spent an afternoon examining the artefacts we have found on site since lockdown in March.  Alfred is the Sixth Form work experience student, who catalogued the Goostrey Gooseberry Society Archive and sorted the finds of a trench dug for a waste pipe, to the North of Toad Hall in 2007.

He came the day before he took up his place at Exeter University to study Archaeology. It was an apt day to mark his transition from a student at the Trust to one of its supporters.  Alfred is the most recent Sixth Former to benefit from the hands on experience that young people get when they are involved in educational activities at The Blackden Trust.