Our speaker was Colin Robbins from The Friends of Wollaton Park. His talk covered the history of the park over the last thousand years. Colin became a volunteer ranger at the park when he retired. Since taking up his role he made it his mission to find out as much as he could about the park and its history. He was a very interesting speaker with an obvious passion for his subject. Amongst many other things we learned that Wollaton was originally named as wulflaten’ meaning the farm of a man called Wulfsi. When the Willoughby family became owners of the estate it was used as farmland for several generations but eventually was transformed into a deer park for the purpose of hunting. Colin talked about the building of the Hall as we know it, along with the development of the gardens and traced the history of the park until it came into public ownership and up to the present day as a much loved and well used public park and thriving nature reserve. The meeting was very well attended and there were lots of questions from members which is always the sign of a good talk!

You can find out more about the Friends of Wollaton Park on their website www.friendsofwollatonpark.org.uk

We also had a raffle to raise money for Maggie’s during breast cancer awareness month. Thank you to all of you who brought in mystery prizes and to those who bought tickets. We raised £73 for the charity…..The mystery prizes were a great hit!