## **The Friends of Honeywood Museum** 

## **Trustees’ Report for 2023/24** 

Charitable Incorporated Organisation No 1175789 

Welcome to another AGM at Honeywood. All the documents that we are required to provide are included in the AGM pack we have posted to you. They include the Annual Accounts which, along with this Trustees’ Report, need to be agreed to be sent to the Charity Commission. 

The headings in this report follow the Charity Commission’s guidance notes on the information that charities must set out in their annual report. 

## **Objectives and Activities** 

The objects of The Friends of Honeywood Museum are as follows: 

- To advance the heritage and arts within the London Borough of Sutton for public benefit 

- To advance education in the heritage of the London Borough of Sutton for public benefit 

All of the activities of the Friends, referred to below, have been in support of these objects. 

## **Structure, Governance and Management** 

The Friends of Honeywood Museum is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation governed by a Charities Commission Association model constitution. The Trustees are as follows: 

Susan Kelsall (Chairman) 

Lucy Kelsall (Secretary) 

Christopher Cartwright (Treasurer) 

Christopher Ford (Membership Secretary) 

Anthony Price (Webmaster) 

Susan Hoskin (Talks Secretary) 

Jeannette Crosier 

John Phillips 

Jill Whitehead 

Each year a third of our Trustees have to stand down and seek re-election. The Trustees have agreed to go through this process in alphabetical order, which means that this year the following Trustees are standing down and seeking re-election: 

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John Phillips 

Tony Price 

## Jill Whitehead 

The Board of Trustees has adopted Rules covering Procedural Rules, Financial Rules, Membership Rules and a Data Protection Procedure. These Rules regulate the way that the Trustees operate and are kept under review to make sure they reflect current good practice. Under the Procedural Rules, the Board of Trustees consists of a Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer and Membership Secretary (all Trustees) and up to six other Trustees. At the end of the year 2023/24 there were five other Trustees with one vacancy. 

The Board of Trustees has the power to co-opt up to three non-voting members to the Board and for 2023/24 these have been: 

Margo Cartwright 

Elizabeth Price 

## 1 Vacancy 

The Procedural Rules also provide that Sutton Council may appoint a local Councillor to act as their Representative at meetings of the Board of Trustees. The Council’s Representative is a non-executive attendee and for 2023/24 has been: 

Cllr Jake Short 

## **Financial Review** 

Accounts for the year 2023/24 are set out separately as part of the Treasurer’s Report.  There will also be a separate Membership Secretary’s Report. Our thanks go to Chris Cartwright and Chris Ford for keeping these areas running so smoothly. 

The Friends’ income continues to come from subscriptions and donations, our regular talks and events and sales from our very popular shop (including duck food sales of course!). 

On the expenditure side, there have been the usual costs of printing and sending out our newsletters and What’s Ons, and there is the monthly cost of the Friends’ Zoom account used at least to hold our regular Board meetings. All valuable ways that we keep in regular touch with our members. Also we do regularly buy new shop stock to keep our shelves well supplied with new and interesting items! 

The Board of Trustees has agreed to fund some much-needed conservation work at Honeywood, we have paid over £8,000 for restorations and conservation work on the Drawing Room floor, a particularly important room now with all the Civil Ceremonies taking place there.  More of this work will follow. We have also paid for whatever has been necessary as part of our garden restoration project, plants, compost etc, as well as half the cost of the six hanging baskets on display at the front of Honeywood over the summer, which make such a difference to the 

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appearance of the front of the Museum.  Recently the Garden Group has taken over cutting the grass and so the Friends have spent £888 on a mower and strimmer. 

The Board has also agreed to buy all the craft materials needed for the very successful craft activities and trails in Honeywood.  These are greatly enjoyed by families, adults and children alike!  Our thanks go to Margo for the brilliant job she does in organising these activities.  We have also paid for storybooks and toys for the various themes, such as rainbows, for children’s activities and we always buy special Honeywood pencils for prizes! 

## **Achievements and Performance** 

The Friends have continued to run regular Book Club sessions, monthly talks, Board of Trustees’ meetings, garden volunteers’ meetings and meetings with Heritage Service staff. 

Our regular, posted, newsletters are always popular with members, very colourful as well as being informative! Many thanks to Tony Price for his wonderful designs for the newsletters and for the Friends’ posters, displayed both inside and outside Honeywood and showing how active the Friends are with a full range of events. Also a great many thanks to Tony for his fantastic work on the Friends’ website, which is always kept totally up to date and for chasing us all to provide the necessary information! 

Tony also runs the Friends’ Twitter account and many thanks also to Jeannette who runs, very successfully, the Friends’ Facebook page. All these contacts have become so important to us as people rely more and more on social media for information. 

Our thanks also go to John Phillips, not just for all the usual and many things he does for the Friends and Honeywood, but also for taking the lead, on behalf of the Friends, with the garden project, working with Jane Howard of the Heritage staff. 

Many thanks also to our Secretary, Lucy Kelsall, for all her support in keeping things running, with agendas, minutes and grant applications whenever possible!  She also runs our really successful Friends’ Book Club, which meets every month (except August) in Honeywood’s Drawing Room.  They consider a wide range of books chosen by members of the Book Club. It’s free to join and even the refreshments are free!  As the membership is now at capacity for a friendly, informal group, we have for the first time, had to use a waiting list! 

Our talks Secretary, Susan Hoskin, has continued to organise a rich and varied programme of monthly talks.  As she organises eight of these a year, this is a considerable task! 

We started the year with a talk in April by David Allen on ‘The Life of Dame Agatha Christie’ exploring the incredible life story of the world- famous crime writer, with wonderful photographs of Agatha and her family. 

In May, Peter Wakeham gave a talk on ‘The Springs of Carshalton’ , shedding light 

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on the springs that formerly flowed in Carshalton and examining their influence on the development of the village and surrounding area. 

The 2023 AGM was again very well attended and was followed by a Social event for members, held out in the garden on a lovely evening. 

Our July talk was by our very popular speaker, Ian Bevan. The subject was Inigo Jones and his rise from the son of a London cloth-worker to being a favourite of the Royal Court of the Stuart Kings and the acclaim that he won as the first English Architect. 

Sutton was involved in the STEAMS Ahead project, exploring science through art and local culture. There were a lot of activities relating to this and the Friends September event was ‘The Unexpected Benefits and Uses of Lavender Oil’. Louisa Alessandra Pini, a Holistic and Clinical Aromatherapist gave a talk on the lavender heritage of the area and the different types of lavender oil. 

In October we were delighted to have our member and one of our Trustees, Jill Whitehead, talk about ‘ The History of My House’. The Dukes family of Vienna and Budapest lived in Jill’s house from 1946 to 1993, having arrived from Vienna in 1939/40 escaping the Nazis. Jill looked at their lives pre-WW2, how WW2 changed everything and how they escaped to Britain. 

In November Alison Weir again supported the Friends’ major pre-Christmas event at CryerArts. Her talk this time was on ‘Henry VIII The Heart and the Crown’ providing details of Henry’s lifelong battle between head and heart, love and duty. Alison also sold her books and drew the winning tickets for our successful Autumn Raffle. 

We started our 2024 programme with a talk by John Birkett of RSPB Croydon Local Group about ‘Birds of Prey’. This illustrated talk looked at various species that are predatory, not just the raptors but e.g. owls and shrikes. 

We finished the year as we had started, with a fascinating talk by David Allen , this time on ‘The Amazing Mr Dickens! ‘ David is an incredible speaker and actor, no IT needed! He told the story of Dickens ‘rags to riches’ life story from his early childhood working in a factory to his illustrious life as a writer and social reformer. 

The Friends also ran two special events during the year. We ran a very successful event on Monday 8th May as part of The Big Help Out for the Coronation weekend. This additional Bank Holiday had been designated as a day for community groups and volunteering and we made the most of it!  We ran children’s games and crafts and gave out lots of information about the Friends from our gazebo in the front of Honeywood. Music was provided by the Wandle Ceilidh Band and the Pennyroyal Clog Dancers and refreshments by the tearoom serving their special Coronation Weekend menu. We were very pleased that other organisations also joined us. In front of Honeywood we had stalls for the Carshalton Old Rectory Association, Carshalton Bowls Club and the Friends of Grove Park. 

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Then in December we were delighted to again be part of the Frost Fair. The Friends work very closely with Ecolocal on this. It is the most amazing family event, packed full with stalls, choirs, dancers and even a giant hog roast! Thousands visit during the five hours that it runs and nearly 1,000 went into Honeywood although we did not have all rooms available to us because of building works taking place. Santa was kept busy in his grotto and Storytelling and Magic shows in the Drawing Room were all fully booked. Our Children’s crafts were run from Ecolocal’s recently refurbished Garden Room and again were totally sold out. It was a really successful afternoon both for publicity for Honeywood and for fundraising. 

As we enter our next year we all know that local government finance is extremely stretched. Honeywood is going to depend even more on our fundraising and our volunteers. 2023/24 was an extremely successful year and we need to keep at it! 

## **Reference and Administrative details** 

Charity Name                                    The Friends of Honeywood Museum Registered Charity number              1175789 Charity’s Principal Address               46, Upland Road, Sutton SM2 5JE 

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## **FRIENDS OF HONEYWOOD MUSEUM** 

|2022/23<br>Figures<br>**INCOME AND EXPENDITURE FOR THE YEAR 2023 -2024**<br>£<br>**INCOME**<br>1,758<br>Subscriptions<br>1,548<br>Donations<br>423<br>Gift Aid<br>800<br>Grants received - LBS<br>-<br>107<br>Contributions by LBS - (Hanging baskets)<br>10,722<br>5,311<br>Sales of Shop stock<br>3,238<br>5,411<br>SumUp Card Payments<br>4,403<br>2,980<br>Fund raising Talks, activities, raffle and fairs<br>180<br>Interest received<br>18,518<br>**LESS EXPENDITURE**<br>3,236<br>Postage, printing, advertising and website<br>3,212<br>Purchases for the Honeywood Museum<br>Gifts and Flowers<br>667<br>Books  /  Crafts<br>5,835<br>Shop Stock<br>Depreciation<br>997<br>Events<br>535<br>Talks<br>539<br>Insurance & Fees<br>138<br>Bank charges<br>188<br>Zoom fees<br>15,347<br>LOSS/SURPLUS ON ACTIVITIES<br>BALANCE SHEET AS AT 31st MARCH 2024<br>ASSETS<br>41,993<br>Current & Deposit Bank Holdings<br>-<br>Cash<br>8,300<br>Dickinson Silver<br>480<br>Fixed Assets<br>2,322<br>Stock of books, cards, maps, stationery etc|2023/24<br>1,711<br>1,499<br>600<br>1,000<br>7,641<br>3,424<br>628|
|---|---|
||16,503|
||2,175<br>12,263<br>368<br>4,028<br>1,340<br>687<br>518<br>132<br>156|
||21,667|
||36,829<br>8,300<br>1,258<br>2,455|



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|-<br>Sundry debtors<br>53,095<br>LIABILITIES<br>52,663<br>Friends of Honeywood Museum<br>432<br>Grotto Research Fund<br>-<br>Sundry creditors<br>53,095||
|---|---|
||48,842|
||48,410<br>432|
||48,842|



Christopher Cartwright - Honorary Treasurer.  This account is an Interim Account up to 31st March 2024. The Friends have audit arrangements involving an Independent Examination by ASP accounts and final figures will be available at the AGM. 

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