Lynn News letters: King's Lynn Parkway, Call the Midwife, Jubilee, Queen Elizabeth Hospital and St George’s Guildhall

The Jubilee celebrations reminded me of all the wonderful fetes and events I’ve been to over the years, particularly when my son was young. Although I’m still not sure he’s forgiven me for making him walk all around the village wearing a boat costume I’d made for a fancy-dress competition – even though he won!

During the recent long bank holiday weekend, I was busy working on the next series of Call the Midwife and not able to get to a street party of my own, but those scenes of communities coming together across the country were wonderful to see.

This month, a charity I’m a big supporter of, Action for Children, is partnering with Iceland to encourage friends, families and neighbours to foster their own sense of community and get together and host a Big Lunch. Although it doesn’t have to be big!

A picnic in the park or lunch with friends will do. So, if like me, you didn’t get the chance to get together with those you love over the Jubilee weekend, and you want to it’s not too late. By hosting a Big Lunch for Action for Children, you can also raise money to help to support vulnerable children and families around the country. Visit https://actionforchildren.uk/tblp for all you need to get started!

Jenny Agutter,

Action for Children

PARKWAY

New school sensible

With future residential development in King’s Lynn in the coming years to include Hardwick Green, Wootton, Knights Hill and Parkway, I welcome the Norfolk County Council cabinet decision this week to allocate funding for a new scheme to cope with the anticipated significant shortfall in local student places.

The expansion of King’s Lynn Academy in Gaywood South was approved for works to start in 2024, but the overall funds available mean there will be an expected capital shortfall. It is therefore once again most unfortunate that the local Conservative borough council decided to allow the Parkway development without any levy towards capital funding allocated for school builds, as requested by Norfolk County Council, and instead us the taxpayers are now having to pick up the shortfall, possibly with expensive lending. A further unnecessary burden on the public purse and another example of why West Norfolk is being let down by the Conservative administration. I dread to think how the community and roads will cope with further HGV movements on top of the 50 a day for Parkway. With this amount of residential building surely a whole new school site would have been a better decision.

Rob Colwell,

Independent borough councillor, Gaywood South

GUILDHALL

Not perfect but still vital

I read with dismay the article by Mark Leslie (Lynn News, May 28), regarding the closure of St George’s Guildhall for further events.

The performance by my 16-piece jazz orchestra, Harmony In Harlem, became the last live event staged at the Guildhall. We performed Duke Ellington’s “Such Sweet Thunder”, a suite dedicated to Shakespeare and his characters, one of the most acclaimed extended works in jazz.

We performed it at the only building still used as a theatre that can claim to have hosted the Bard himself, and on Shakespeare’s birthday too – also St George’s Day.

I must say that St George’s Guildhall is one of the most enjoyable venues we have encountered. The atmosphere and acoustics, the luxury of a real piano of some quality, all lent themselves to a fantastic evening.

It is a shame that we did not attract a larger audience for what to us seemed one of our best performances to date, and a technically challenging one at that.

The Trustees of Shakespeare’s Guildhall Trust worked hard to promote and stage the event for us, yet I hear they have not been invited to be an active part of plans for the future of this unique mediaeval Guildhall complex.

The closure of the basement cafe is a great loss too.

I first visited the Guildhall in 2020 when we planned to put on this concert, but which was cancelled thanks to the pandemic, and at that time the cafe was open. It seems obvious that such a venue needs such facilities.

Amanda Arterton and Ivor Rowlands of the GST enthused about their vision for the future of the Guildhall for arts, crafts and performance with integrated facilities all the way back to the riverside and with a unified, coherent management.

There is a much wider issue at stake here too, which I hope the folk of King’s Lynn and the local authorities will consider. Finding venues for concerts can be difficult. Custom-built, modern performance venues often charge what I consider to be ridiculous sums of money. With my expected audience figures, how can I risk £1,600 to hire the 500-seat West Road concert hall in Cambridge or, more perversely, almost the same amount for the newer J2 venue at Cambridge Junction which seats only 220?

Some years ago when The Apex was to be built in Bury St Edmunds, it was billed as “encouraging artists, national and local alike”. However, it was later clear that such an expensive, modern performance venue wasn’t going to be accommodating a “nobody” amateur such as myself, despite my national (but niche) reputation as an expert in the music of Duke Ellington, unless I paid rather a lot for the privilege.

The sort of venues that a non-professional ensemble such as mine can rely on are the converted guildhalls, maltings, former civic halls and such-like: The Cut Arts Centre in Halesworth is a good example, the smaller Haverhill Arts Centre or the Quay Theatre, Sudbury.

Often such establishments operate on a ticket-take share basis, spreading the risk between performer and venue, and are often run as registered charities with some degree of volunteer staffing.

The closure of St George’s Guildhall could represent another nail in the coffin of accessible “less than perfect” venues.

King’s Lynn would do well to ensure that its number of theatres is not reduced by one and that if St George’s Guildhall is reopened, it must be as an integrated site in which all the workshops, riverside restaurant and theatre support each other under one umbrella.

It should not have such an excess spent on it that it prices itself out of the market for the likes of my orchestra and others but nor should it languish, deteriorate, or be left to scrape along as an isolated theatre with no facilities accompanying it: a slow and painful death for a building which, when I first saw it in February 2020, took my breath away.

Michael Kilpatrick,

Royston Road, Whittlesford, Cambs

QEH

Where was the Press?

So, the Government’s super-efficient publicity machine didn’t get round to tipping off the local press about the imminent visit by Health Minister MP Edward Argar to the crumbling Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn recently.

What an omission! You’d imagine both this MP and local MP James Wild (who’d invited this minister to visit) would have been very keen to set the record straight and offer some answers to reporters who’d no doubt be asking several pithy questions about its future.

This isn’t the first time the press has been boycotted when there’s a Government bigwig scheduled for a flying visit to our worryingly wobbly hospital.

It’s as though they’re hiding behind the smokescreen of a few cheesy publicity photographs with hospital executives because they know they’ve literally got nothing to tell us and James Wild and this Health Minister are utterly terrified of being backed into a corner by the press and that’s why they scuttle in and out under the radar to avoid being harried by ‘impertinent’ questions from reporters.

I think this failure to invite the media speaks volumes about the contempt in which we’re all held by this patronising Tory regime. All we want to know is whether we’re getting a new hospital or letting the current one collapse. Yes ... or no James? Perhaps you could let us know in your next column please?

Steve Mackinder,

Denver