Recent Articles

In Greek myths it never pays to be boastful before the gods. The young Arachne was a wonderful weaver and as Ovid writes in his Metamorphoses she had the temerity to challenge the goddess Athena to a tapestry weaving contest. Bizarrely Athena was the goddess of war, handicrafts and reason – which ...

This year the Cranleigh and District Branch of The Royal British Legion are planning for Remembrance Sunday in the way it was conducted before the Coronavirus pandemic. Last year, because of Government guidelines we were only able to conduct a small service of Remembrance at the War Memorial, with ...

Me running in my amateur days as Susan Tooby SUSAN: I was born and brought up in a little village called Woolhope, in Herefordshire, which is a small, rural community, smaller than Rudgwick, where I live now. I’m one of four children. I have an identical twin, Angela and two brothers. My ...

From the days of horse-drawn coaches: Mann’s in the late 19th century People of Cranleigh faced the unimaginable this autumn when David Mann & Sons department store announced that it was closing, with the retirement of the chairman, Richard Womack. For 134 years it had been at the heart of ...

Grey Wagtail (Motacilla cinerea) As the crowd in the centre of Cranleigh gathered around the war memorial on Remembrance Sunday a stray note suddenly broke the silence. It was not an accidental emission from a nervous member of the band but the sharp, high-pitched and far carrying call of ...

As we are becoming more and more aware of how the natural world has evolved, I have been exploring why deciduous leaves turn colour in autumn. As the tree becomes dormant, a compound called abscisic acid triggers a seal to develop at the base of the leaves, before they fall off. This reduces water ...