Camberley WI
Previous Meetings
More photos may be found by clicking on the date of the meeting.
20th January 2026 - Murderous Women!
We had a good turnout for our first meeting of the year, when we heard former Surrey Police Officer David Chave talk about female murderers and the criminal justice system. Typically around 6% of convicted murderers are women, and David spoke in detail about three of them.
Ruth Ellis was the last woman hanged in Britain, after she was convicted of murdering a male friend. There was no doubt that she shot him and had intended to do so, but David gave us fresh insight into her troubled background, including domestic abuse from her victim and coercion from another boyfriend, and pointed out that today she would have been treated more sympathetically in court.
David had worked on the other two cases he described, and we learned how police officers had tracked down the perpetrators. It made for a really interesting evening from a competent speaker, and a great start to the year!
17th February 2026 - Clothing - Colour & Style
Coco Chanel apparently said "You can buy fashion, but not style." At our February meeting, Image Consultant Alison Hoyland gave us a thought-provoking presentation on how to choose the colours and style of clothing that suit our bodies – is your skin colour yellow or blue based, do you suit bright or muted colours, and do you have an hour-glass figure or are you a similar shape to a stick of rhubarb, a strawberry, an apple or a pear?!
Alison did a quick analysis on the colours which suited one of our members, and then demonstrated the effect of different jacket lapels on herself. She showed how different styles of clothing can be used to emphasise your best features and can draw the eye away from areas you aren't so proud of!
17th March 2026 - A Life's Journey
Our very own Mandy Barraclough, gave us a very interesting talk on how she had researched her family tree then used her creative writing skills to produce a short story incorporating the facts that she had discovered with embellishments to fill in the gaps.
The story started in 1880 when Mandy's Gt. Grandad Thomas Way was working on the family farm with a passion for horses. He married his childhood sweetheart Annie Marie in 1904, and the following year Harvey Thomas was born - the eldest of 3 boys & Mandy's Grandad. We followed them when they emigrated to Canada in search of a "better life" - farming in Alberta was not without hardships, but they overcame them, then decided to return to England in 1913 for Annie to have her 3rd son.
They bought a plot of land in Buckinghamshire & built up a farm where Mandy spent a lot of her younger years. As well as being beautifully written, Mandy brought along various artefacts which supported the family story, including the poster calling for British families to move to Canada.
21st April 2026 - Candle Making
We paid homage to the Two Ronnies and each made four candles under the expert guidance of Brian Graham at our April meeting. This was a lovely sociable evening as we sat at round tables and chatted to the new and prospective members who joined us. Brian led us step by step through the process of rolling the beeswax sheets around a wick and the results looked very impressive. Many thanks to Melanie for organising the evening.
We had a really interesting talk from Grace Evans of Chertsey Museum this month. Grace described the class structure of 1912 and how life aboard the Titanic mirrored this. We saw photos of the opulent first-class cabins and dining rooms, and heard how the upper-class ladies would have 4 changes of clothing a day in order to fulfil all the social conventions of the time. Grace talked about how ladies’ fashions were changing from the corset & bustle of the Victorian era into a less formal, slimline silhouette, and we saw examples of the time from the Museum’s extension Olive Matthews collection of period clothing.
16th June 2026 - Chelsea Flower Show Gardener & Plant Sale
We had a very enjoyable talk from Mark Gregory, from local company Landform, who has designed and built over 100 gardens at Chelsea Flower Show over the last 37 years. He talked in detail about the preparation that goes into researching and designing the gardens, and the attention to detail required to add authenticity in his gardens.
Following the talk, we had a plant sale, selling both indoor and outdoor plants, which members had propagated, for charity.
