What we were up to in May and June

• We led three morning walks to Chantries Wood, Leith Hill and Thursley Common.
• We held our Annual General Meeting and elected a new executive committee.
• We convened our second Book Club meeting.
• We organised a seminar about conserving and listing noteworthy trees in Burpham.
• We went litterpicking in the park and around our main roads.

Coming up in July-August

Burpham Village Fair
Saturday 12 July | 12.00-3.00pm | Sutherland Memorial Park | FREE

Find us in Sutherland Hall for our famous cream tea. We have a free Park Treasure Trail for the kids (with prizes!), a play area and toys, plus a book stall, a display of local photographs and our freebies.

Summer Walks
Meet 10.00am | FREE

• Saturday 5 July for Whitmoor Common and Jordans Hill at the Salt Box Road Car Park.
• Saturday 19 July for The Sights of Compton at the Watts Gallery entrance.
• Saturday 16 August Over the fields to Clandon, taking in woods, field and a quick refreshment at The Onslow Arms. A useful short cut to know! Meet at the elbow bend of Merrow Common Road.

Tree Safari
Friday 18 July | 10.30am-12.30pm | FREE

Meet on the elbow bend of New Inn Lane opposite the railway arch. Our purpose is to spot, measure and record Burpham’s most precious trees for the Woodland Trust. We will be led by Donna Collinson.

Drop-in Advice from a tree specialist
10.30am-11.15am | Sutherland Memorial Hall (Hub Café)

FREE – plus a free tea or coffee for anyone with a question for our expert Dick Grainger about trees – tree management, diseases, identification, etc

Visit to historic sites (No1)
Loseley Park Gardens
Saturday 9 August | Meet 10.30am in the car park

These fine Jacobean gardens lie just outside Guildford. Note the entrance cost is £11.50 on the door, so not free. Lifts offered.

Burpham Photo Competition

Now open. Submit up to 3 photos on the subject of Burpham to win prizes and commendations. Phone snaps are very welcome. Instructions on our website. Categories for both young and mature photographers. Display of winners in Sutherland Hall at the Village Fair on 12 July.

Hello & Goodbye

Goodbye…

Barber & Brew Café, sadly missed, but at least the barber stays… Susan Poole, our retiring Treasurer, with our heartfelt thanks for many years of service… PC Ingham who was our pro-active Burpham community police officer, but the very experienced PCSO Emma stays… Ted Mayne our ex-councillor who passed away in May.

Hello…

Saturday Community Café in Sutherland Park from mid-morning to early afternoon each Saturday… BCA Book Club now meeting monthly… Burpham Village Fair returning on 12 July.

New Executive Committee

Elected at our AGM:

Chair: Sue Hackman
Vice Chair: Andy Clapham
Treasurer: David Hawke
Membership: Liz Turner
Minuting Secretary: Catherine Hughes
Environment: Jim Allen
TBA: James Hanson
TBA: Adam Heilbron
TBA: Niels Laub

Contact any of us through secretary@burphamca.org.uk

Box hedges or bushes turning brown?

If you have box hedges or bushes, it’s time to check they are not infested with Box Tree Caterpillar which is present in the Burpham area. It can have a devastating effect on the species and is difficult to control.

From early spring, check the foliage for signs of the caterpillar. It is a greenish yellow colour with black markings and there is likely to be associated webbing on the stems and leaves. On badly infected plants, you may be surprised at the number of caterpillars.

The parent moth lays its eggs on the underside of the leaves making them difficult to spot. The caterpillar eats the leaves and can strip the bark resulting in unsightly brown, defoliated and dead areas across the plant. In extreme cases, the whole plant/hedge may be affected.

There are various methods of control available but this will be a continuous treatment throughout the growing season and subsequent years. It may be better to remove the infected plants and replace with a different species.

There are other reasons for box turning brown and losing its leaves such as Box Blight but the presence of the caterpillar normally confirms the cause as Box Tree Caterpillar.

For more information on treatments and suitable replacement plants visit the Royal Horticultural Society web site – rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/box-tree-caterpillar

BCA Book Club

We have been reading: ‘Orbital’ by Samantha Harvey and winner of the 2025 Book Prize. It is an accessible book of just 200 pages. We enjoyed the beauty of the poetic language and the unusual perspective of six astronauts circling the globe in the International Space Station. True to its title, the astronauts circle psychologically around their mission and their lives back on earth. We missed conventional character development, but found it a very likeable and unusual book.

‘When the Dust Settles’ by Lucy Easthope, which follows the real life experiences of the author (who is a disaster recovery specialist), taking in Grenfell, the New Year’s Day tsunami, Hillsborough and other well-known catastrophes. We found it intriguing and revealing.

Our next novel is ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her novel is largely drawn from her family’s Nigerian heritage of war, love, betrayal and survival. It will be discussed on Tuesday 24 June at 7.30pm in Sutherland Hall. A few of us are also reading Graham Norton’s Frankie, a Sunday times bestseller, to which we will give some time in the second half of the session.

We meet on the last Tuesday of the month at 7.30pm in Sutherland Hall.

Join the BCA Bulletin

BCA members have benefited from an email bulletin which keeps them up to date with our activities, local developments and news between issues of Burpham pages. We want
to reach everyone who lives in Burpham and leave no-one out, and we have therefore decided to open this service to everyone who lives or works here. To sign up, send your name, home address and email address to Liz Turner, our membership secretary, on membership@burphamca.org.uk