Gotham Gala

This page is kindly provided by Sue Robinson of the Gotham Gala committee. Hopefully this will be the start of several guest writers for Gothamvillage.co.uk, please let me know if you wish to contribute to the site. My contact details can be found on the Contact page.

Gotham is a Saxon name meaning "Home of Goats" and has it's roots going back into English History. Gotham is not a pretty "chocolate box" village as local industries of gypsum mining and plastic making gives the village a useful façade. For more than a thousand years, Gotham has been a thriving, hard working community and it's claim to fame is an anthology  of stories called "The Meric Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham".  These were printed for the first time during the reign of King Henry VIII (1491-1547). These tales have been around for years and have been passed from generation to generation.

The Gotham Gala began life as an annual church outing encouraging children to join in games such as hide and seek, blind man's buff and dancing around the maypole. As time passed, villagers began to use this as an opportunity to display their vegetables, preserves, cakes and pie making skills and it became the "Gotham Show". This continued for a very long time and my husband's Grandfather still has his show medals from 1932 !!

For reasons no-one seems to know, the Gotham show stopped for a short period, probably due to the oinset of the second world war. It has been revived in recent years and has been very successful for the last five years. All prceeds from the Gotham gala are ploughed back into the village to help the many groups who rely on voluntary funds and to help the local village school with much needed equipment.

The Gotham gala is organised by a group of very loyal and hard working people who give their very valuable time freely to what they see as a way to give something back to their village which is a very refreshing gesture in these very busy times !

The latest Gotham gala took place on Sunday 8th July with the fancy dress parade starting at 11:45am. There were many tempting food stalls including hot pork rolls with apple sauce and stuffing, hot dogs with onions, candy floss, doughnuts,  cakes and tarts from the local W.I. There were lots of attractions in the main arena including terrier racing, kestrels, gymnastics and lots more. There was also plenty of action around the site including a bucking bronco, quad bikes, tug of war and loads of stalls.

Inside the Memorial Hall there were displays of arts and crafts and various other stalls. The tea rooms were complete with background music and best of all admission was FREE !

Take a look below at some of the happy faces at this years gala.

Fairy Sammy Cottee casts a spell to bring good weather to Gotham gala
Photo (c) Nottingham Evening Post

Fancy dress cousins Bradley(left) and Luke North, both 4, take in a cool drink at Gotham gala
Photo (c) Nottingham Evening Post

Children enjoy the horse and cart ride at Gotham Gala