Part 2
I visited Brookhouse Farm in 1994 and got on well with the
owner, Bernard Ellis. He told me that in the early 50’s he had considered
knocking down the farmhouse and starting afresh. He later changed his mind and
only altered the building. We had many get-togethers talking about the Woods. I
then decided as the year 2000 was getting near that maybe we could set up a link
with Brookhouse-Bury and Woodbury, New Jersey, America, since by now I had found
out there was a city in New Jersey named after the Woods from Bury.
Around 1998 I enlisted a great friend, Roy Melluish, to
help me in my quest to find a contact in America. I had
been asked to speak to the Tottington Town Woman’s Guild meeting in the library.
Waiting to speak, I wandered amongst the books and spotted a book written by an
American about the Woods in
America, which
gave us contact numbers. What a find!
Our next step was to approach Bury Council to find out if
they would be interested in my idea. I had a meeting with the Bury mayor who
then arranged a meeting with the leaders of council. They expressed interest
and, when Adrian Frost of the council came back to Bury to report about a
meeting with the Millennium commission, this became Bury’s millennium project.
Roy was able to make contact with a
Woodbury official, Tom Bowe, whom he finally convinced that Bury citizens would
be coming to
America in
2000.
I asked Sir Jeremy Black to be our patron and this was to
be the plan: more than 400 people including youth from
Bury Grammar
School choir and Tottington Brass Band, accompanied
by British TV, would come to Woodbury,
New Jersey. I was to sail in a tall rigger
called the Phoenix with the
young people to Philadelphia, having
been given pride of place on Penn’s Landing. Our youth were to take part in
competitions against the youth of Woodbury. The choir did sing, the band did
play, and our kids won almost every sporting event. Friendships were made, but,
unfortunately, the Phoenix did not
come to America.
It had been indicated that I was to receive £250,000 from the millennium
committee for the tall ship. Its final port of call was to be the Millennium
Dome for Bury’s day in
London on our return from
America. Because
a bid went in for nearly £1,000,000, we lost the lot.
So the sailboat Henry Wood then came into the story. The
next part is not about all the voyages of the Henry Wood, but about its three
attempts over six years to finally sail up Woodbury Creek. That was my goal. I
had many adventures along the way, but without the help of the best of the human
race it would never have happened. Now we have to get back to
England. It
looks as if this will also take three attempts, the third one coming up in
2009.
