April 2000 - First Thoughts on Oxton

Welcome to the first of my monthly village update sections. I thought I'd begin with a brief background on the development of the site to date, followed by a small comment on the goings on in the village. In future months I hope to include more information on events in and around the village, so if you know of any then please email me at webhost@oxtonvillage.com

I originally had the idea of setting up the Oxton Village website around about this time last year on one of my weekly walks through the village with my son. It is around about this time of the year that the village starts to come alive. The birds can be heard chirping in the trees, and the flowers and buds on the trees start appearing. The concept was to set up a site to promote local businesses that operate within and around the village. I had also noted that a number of sites had begun to appear on the net, and maybe here was an opportunity to link them under the Oxton Village name.

Unfortunately I just didn't seem to find the time to start it. Finally I set to work developing the site in August 1999 and published the first version of it the following month. The basic layout of the site was much as it is now although probably a bit more "cluttered".

I have plans to set up a chat room and would be interested  to hear from anybody  who would like to contribute to the site. It has been suggested that I should widen the historical areas of the site and also to get some more pictures of the neighbourhood set up, hopefully this should be achieved over the next few months.

There have been a number of developments within the village since I began my look at the area. A number of houses have changed hands, Christchurch has celebrated its 150th Anniversary, some shops have closed in the village, including the antiques shop at the foot of Rose Mount, the fitness shop  in the centre and John's Newsagents in Claughton Firs, however the last month has seen two new shops open in Claughton Firs, The Village Barbers and Oxton Fast Tan.

There is little to report on the local news front this month mainly because I've been busy publishing the site and also had a one week 'cloudy' holiday in Lanzarote. Why not visit our links section which contains a number of links to other local sites and a few other interesting ones.We will be constantly on the look out for local sites so if you know of any please let us know. 

Well that's it for this month. hope you had a great Easter and look forward to you revisiting our site and supplying comments on it over the coming months.