The W.W. Buckingham Ballroom
Last night I went to a party to celebrate 50 years of the Rose Hill Community Centre on its present site, at the top of the Oval. In 1956, the council gave the community association some land and £10,000 to build a new community centre to replace the one that had stood in Ashhurst Way (where Butler House is now) since 1937, and had burned down.
As well as commemorating the anniversary, the community association had decided to mark another occasion too: the naming of the ballroom after Bill Buckingham. Regular readers of this blog may know Bill, who stood down as the Labour councillor for Rose Hill in May. Bill had first become a councillor in 1952, and represented Rose Hill through boundary changes as part of Littlemore Parish Council, Bullingdon Rural District Council, South Oxfordshire District Council, and finally, from 1990, Oxford City Council. Bill was Lord Mayor in 1994, and was also a magistrate.
The party was wonderful. There were speeches from the chair, Carol Davies; from George Cooper, a relative stripling at 42 years’ residence on the estate; from the Lord Mayor; and from Bill himself. A local chef had done a superb job with the catering, and we all danced to a fifties and sixties cover band til the small hours. It was particularly lovely to see Bill’s wife Margaret, who’s not been well and doesn’t come out much.
Here’s Bill, who’s still secretary of the community association, and goes in every morning to deal with business, dancing with his assistant, Ellie:
The Lord Mayor, Jim Campbell, unveils the plaque for Bill:
When Bill stood down in May, he said “My hopes are that I shall be allowed to see the improvements on the Rose Hill estate, with the new houses going up to replace the Orlits and the revamped community centre.” He’s a hard act to follow, and those are no easy tasks, but we’ll try!
A pedant writes
“If the Centre was built in 1966 shouldn’t it be celebrating its 40th birthday around now?”
Sorry, slip of the finger! Now corrected.
Was David “machine gun” Blunkett at the anniversary celebration and did you ask him why he wanted to machine gun prisoners?
Was Blair at the celebration and did you ask him why he was privatising the NHS
Was Patricia Hewitt there did you ask her why she was cutting Mental Health services.
No, no and unsuprisingly, no. Thanks for the thought, though.