What a wonderful evening Thursday was! To all of you who joined us at The Axminster Guildhall to celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE Day with the legendary BBC journalist and war correspondent, Kate Adie CBE, thank you!
Planning for this event began back in 2024 when our trustee Rebecca, who had attended a talk by Kate a few years previously, contacted her agent about the possibility of Kate giving a talk for us. We knew that for a celebrity of Kate’s magnitude our Bradshaw Meeting Room would definitely not be large enough, and as community is at the heart of everything we do at the Axminster Heritage Centre we felt the best venue for this once-in-a-lifetime event would be The Axminster Guildhall so we reached out to them and were delighted when they accepted our offer to collaborate with us on this event. Leigh and his team have been wonderful from start to finish, providing us with not only a fantastic venue, worthy of such a wonderful lady, but they have also dealt with all the ticket sales and technical issues along with joint marketing, which ensured a capacity audience of over 320 on the night. Thursday 8th May 2025, in the words of our inimitable Town Crier, Nick Goodwin was “Living history at its best” and we would like to thank the Guildhall for supporting us to make the evening possible and look forward to hopefully working with them again in the future.
None of this would have been possible however without the remarkable woman that everyone had come to see – Kate Adie CBE. Axminster Heritage Centre would like to thank Kate for not only her wonderful talk that provided a unique insight into the integral role played by women both in the forces and on the home front, but more importantly, we would like to thank Kate for agreeing to do this for us in the first place! From the very first telephone call with our talks programme volunteer, Rebecca, Kate has shown such kindness and generosity of spirit that we cannot thank her enough.
This thank you post would be in no way complete without issuing a big thank you to the lovely Jay Hobday who opened for us singing songs from the 1940s. Jay arrived in Axminster just four years ago, but we cannot imagine the town without her now as she has become such an important part of our community here. We look forward to working with Jay again soon.
