We were just delivering two very large boxes of Barrow Voice to Peter Yates in June when he made the throw-away comment that he has delivered the magazine right from the very first publication. We thought this pretty extraordinary, so I asked him to share his reminiscences of The Early Days.

The Early Days are those of the creation of Barrow upon Soar Community Association (now shortened to BUSCA) and of Barrow Voice itself. The article in March 2025: ‘Barrow Voice celebrates its 50th Birthday' outlined the beginnings of the magazine whose function was to inform residents of all that was going on amongst the 30 village groups that were brought together to work on creating a community centre as part of Humphrey Perkins School. But Peter was more involved than ‘just’ delivering Barrow Voice. He took over as secretary of the Community Association from Sandie Forrest (our Parish Council chair) and did that for nine years during the 1970s. It was a period of intense fund-raising including the infamous Donkey Derbys, sponsored walks, regular dances, jumble sales, coffee mornings, cheese and wine evenings and so on, all to pay for a new community centre. Eventually the centre was opened in 1980.

During this time, Peter was involved in the mechanics of creating each issue of Barrow Voice. He remembers meetings when they had to glue articles onto sheets of paper laid out on the floor and then a week later, the duplicated pages were put out on tables and volunteers followed a route to pick up the pages in the right sequence and staple them together. He also remembers the huge task of creating boxes of the magazine to go to specific deliverers with the right instructions and addresses and numbers. He says we’re spoiled nowadays: our skilful graphic designers do all the layout digitally, fast machines print, fold, collate and staple the copies and finally, they automatically count the right number of magazines to go into about 60 uniquely labelled boxes.

After finishing as Community Association secretary, Peter focused his energies to help get a youth club established in the almost derelict “horticulture building” at Humphrey Perkins. This was no mean feat, but with the help of the existing youth leaders and other volunteers working with the teaching professionals, after many setbacks, they achieved a successful Barrow Youth Club, eventually run by paid youth leaders in the renovated building: Peter’s dream!

Peter helped with improving the swimming pool at Humphrey Perkins. The original pool was open to the elements, unheated and very basic. I know this because I swam there from 1966 to 1969, open to the winds and unguarded. You just walked through the headmaster’s garden and helped yourself! Later, school children took part in whole-school sponsored walks to raise money to put a roof on, but it was still pretty crude: lacking lighting, heating and no entrance door for the non-swimming public. Peter helped with the installation of lighting, building a public entrance, and also became one of the lifesavers for the public swimming sessions. Once it was a more acceptable facility it started to be hired out to clubs and public sessions in addition to being used by school. That took management and here again, Peter was your man. He assisted Arthur Ball, a caretaker at the school, whose specific responsibility was to nurture the very temperamental boiler. That all came to an end when it was announced that the roof contained asbestos and must permanently close.

Peter’s only involvement with BUSCA now, apart from being a member and supporter, is to carry on delivering Barrow Voice. He both delivers boxes to deliverers and delivers 110 copies to households... four times a year. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Peter for his exceptional dedication to enriching the life of this village.

Peter and I are both over 80. We both need younger people to take over the reins. If you have a bit of time and energy spare, do please call me on 07718 153117, or email me on judithrodgers155@gmail.com. We need to build a team to organise the delivery of Barrow Voice into the future. That might not involve any actual delivering. It could involve one hour four times a year or much more. That’s your choice.

Judith Rodgers