Issue 135 - the Pembury Village Website

THE PEMBURY SOCIETYAT THE SPRING Meeting of The Pembury Society in April,Ken Watts, the Chairman, had the pleasure of publiclyannouncing that the Parish Council had agreed to work withThe Pembury Society looking at a suitable design for a newvillage sign.We were very pleased that the Hope ’08 Fun Day, organised bythe three churches of Pembury, was such a success and that theHospice in the Weald received such a handsome donation.The Autumn Meeting and AGM of the Society will be held on 23 October in the VillageHall at 8pm. Everyone is welcome to attend. The speaker for the evening will be thePembury Community Warden, Tom Younger, and his main topic will be Home Security.For those of you who aren’t aware of The Pembury Society, or what they do, the Societyhad their first formal meeting in 1974. A Pembury resident named Cyril Masterman, uponmoving to Pembury, found that too many developers were designing plans for housingestates and so designed a plan for the village which involved building a by-pass alongMaidstone Road.The Society has many aims including protecting the historical and architectural aspects ofthe village. They encourage residents to appreciate the area and take pride in the village,making it an attractive place to live and they provide the voice that matters in the right areaswhen it matters.If you would like to join the Society, please fill in the membership form found on thePembury website. The weight of the Society is directly related to the numbers of members ithas: the more members there are, the more effective the voice.Ken WattsChairman, Pembury SocietyWELCOME BACK, DENISE!IN 1988, I WALKED in to the new estate agent’s officein the High Street, just to say hello and introduce myselfto Denise Barnes. Twenty years later, I did the same thisJuly. Same face, at the same desk with the same cheerywelcome.Denise sold her business in 2005 at the top of its game.Transforming over two years into DB Estates under newmanagement, it went into insolvency this summer.However, the money in the village was on Denise.She bought the assets back and with new business partner,Howard Kingsnorth, formerly head of the Tonbridge office, she started up again. Living inthe village herself, Denise has helped a lot of people buy and sell houses in Pembury andhas employed a lot of local people over the years.Alison Morton9