Focus on Crewe

The Inner Wheel club of Crewe was founded in 1946.

One of our founder members, Muriel Leach, became District 5 Chairman and eventually Association President of GB&I. Also, another of our members, Mary Mackenzie, was both District Secretary and Chairman of District 5. Another one of our founder members gave birth to Ailsa Clewlow, who became founder member of the Biddulph Club and also District 5 Chairman.             

We usually have about six speakers each year, some are connected to charities we are supporting and others come from a variety of backgrounds: we have had a talk about religious clothing, design and making of jewelry by a silversmith, climate change and also waste disposal to name but a few.

Our biggest annual fund raiser has been a quiz with over 100 people attending, which we have held for several years. Our youngest member works for Santander bank and for the last couple of years they have matched whatever we have made on our raffle, which has helped enormously! We have also had a very popular annual coffee morning near the end of November for several years at Chris Gregory’s home, when we have had mince pies and mulled wine as well. She is also very good at coming up with some very imaginative ways of spending the non-speaker evenings, such as mini quizzes and unusual competitions such as “The most unusual egg cup”. We also have the occasional outing such as the one we had last summer to Keele University, when we were given a guided tour of part of the grounds after afternoon tea.

In 1949 our club won the district 5 competition to name their magazine and the prize was a visitors book. In 1987 the club held a brass band concert which raised enough money for them to buy a Guide Dog, which they also called Quinta. As soon as the site was ready (in 2001), the club planted a Golden Leaf Elm tree at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire to celebrate the Millenium.

Naturally we do quite a bit to support the Rotary Club that most of our husbands belong to. We fill Rotary Shoe boxes each year and, in December, we usually help them with their Christmas float by providing Santa and all his helpers with refreshments at the end of their rounds each evening over a two week period. Last December they were not allowed to knock on doors because of the virus so we weren’t needed, but hopefully things will get back to normal next Christmas. Amazingly though, they still managed to collect a large amount of money last year because so many members of the public came out of their homes to donate money anyway!

We have some very good ‘knitters’ in our group who have knitted baby blankets for Past District Chairman Helen Lamerton’s charity ‘SANDS’ and Sue Protheroe has also knitted blankets for for overseas charities.

In recent years, whilst in ‘Lock Down’, some of our members, along with some ladies who were in the same NWR club as they are, knitted a lot of bunnies in aid of the “Women and Girls” charity.

The Crewe club was the first one in our district to have two members acting as joint Presidents and it suited us so much (what with a lot of us having time to go on holiday more often, look after grandchildren etc. etc.) that we have had joint presidents ever since. We may be a small club nowadays, but we are certainly a very happy one.