Inside this issue:

25 Years of Northwold
Bowls

By Michael Parfitt

Shrubbery at the time was an American pilot, Rud McGuire. His ambition was to play bowls on the green before he went back. He used to turn up to help on his bike with some cans of beer fixed on the carrier which made him very popular with the Chairman. In a very short time the green began to take shape. I know I shouldn't single out names but it is important otherwise this article wouldn't make sense, which it probably won't anyway..
I believe the first thing we used was Tommy on his 'Crawler' tractor for the initial ground work, then I believe Lenny Lavender cultivated it with his tractor. Tommy also made two peculiar looking rakes which consisted of a long Piece of wood, turned edge to the ground with a handle attached. They were the perfect tool for levelling the ground, which they did by scraping the hills into the holes so to speak.
Then one evening the late Lenny Jones brought a "Cowley Level" home from work and things got a bit more technical. This is one of the reasons why the green is so level. I remember one Sunday morning Tommy and myself spent some hours throwing soil through a screen, whilst our dogs, "Henry" and "Jason" spent the time knocking each other around the field. Incidentally you don't get fat working with Tom. No need for fancy diets. Just keep shovelling at his

This summer, Northwold Bowls club celebrates 25 years - quite an achievement in today's "overnight wonder" world!
Well, when the Sports and Social club was formed way back in the mists of time, a man by the name of Bill Cryer was elected Secretary, and I was among many members on the committee. When the Club had not been going that long, and the date I am not certain of I was talking one evening to Bill about the possibility of forming a bowls club, after he had told me that he played bowls. So Bill put a notice on the notice board to the effect that anyone interested in forming a bowls club, "Append their Name below".
I think there were two names appended. Probably because they were the only two who knew what the word append meant. I had to explain to Bill that we don't go in for appending in Norfolk, we "Stick our name down". Anyway having failed miserably we gave it a month or two and tried again and this time we got I believe 9 names "Appended". So we formed ourselves into the Bowls section of the Sports and social club and started from scratch. I assumed the mantle of Chairman and Bill was Secretary.
At this time a small part of the Rec', where the bowling green now is, was not cut. It was just a rough piece of ground, and it was to this unused corner that the new Bowls section went. We had toyed with the idea of having the green in the opposite corner near where the swings now are, but at the time there was a large elm tree there and we were advised against this location. To raise funds we started a 100 club which brought us in some money to start with but by and large the reason for the success in making the green was down to the terrific support we had with the club members spending their evenings, and weekends working for nothing. And remember most of them had never played bowls in their life. I remember that living in the