(Continued)
The water supply is naturally also a regular item
of interest. In 1946 concern was expressed about the quality
of water drawn from the pump on Little Thurlow Green and
about the fact that the cistern on Pound Green was often
empty. In October 1951 it was finally decided to remove
all the standpipes from the village now that mains water
could be supplied to all houses, but the last public handpump
didn't finally go till 1961.
Another enduring preoccupation makes its first appearance in October 1951, when it was suggested that the time had come for the village to have an official speed limit. This now crops up frequently in the minutes, though it wasn't until 1975 that the village finally got a 40 mph limit and it wasn't until 1995 that we got the 30 mph limit. Well, we made it in the end; now we just have to find a way of enforcing it.
In its own very small way the Minute Book is a chronicle of social history, much of it just local to Thurlow, of course, but some with national or even international resonances. We hear of the distress at a serious traffic accident in July 1976, the gift of 45 commemorative Jubilee mugs to the children of the parish in January 1977, concern about fluoride in the water in January 1980, anxious enquiries about the precautions against nuclear attack in March 1980, complaints about the dispersal of noxious chemical sprays in April 1982, and 'violent opposition' in September 1986 to the most dreadful threat of all the proposed amalgamation of the Little Thurlow and Little Bradley Parish Councils.
Finally, a little success story. In March 1979 it was proposed and duly seconded that a board with a footpath map should be erected in some prominent place in the village for the benefit of the public. It finally was, by Len Robinson in January 1995. The mills of the Parish Council, like those of God, grind exceeding slow and exceeding small.