From the Wenhaston 'Game' to 'Warblers' and the many 'Players', there has always been various forms of entertainment in the local area
Church Ales were a means of making money for the church. Plays were performed probably on a stage on the back of a farm cart, travelling around near villages. In the Walberswick Accounts for 1493 there is "Item payed for bread and drink when the Wenhaston game (play) was shown here - threepence". Church Ales were sometimes in a form of a wake, for example Alice Foxe in her will of 1546 left instructions that a barrel of beer and food were to be distributed to the parishioners of Wenhaston.
We never had a Fair, but annually there was a show including a donkey race between the Queen"s Head, Blyford, and The Star Inn.
During the last World War in the 1940s, Mrs Ethel Pearce formed a concert party called "The Wenhaston Warblers" which toured locally raising funds for the war.
In 1948 Elizabeth Ashton formed a group called "Patchwork Players". First they appeared in The Hut, forerunner of the Village Hall. They became the "Wenhaston Players", touring local villages. A newspaper cutting of 1963 informed us that a large audience at Uggeshall Village Hall enjoyed a very "creditable" show by the "Wenhaston Players". It opened with a Mexican farce, followed by dances and songs and finally the younger members played "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".
In November 1978 local talent produced a brilliant show "The Wenhaston Pier Show" with the programme entitled "A Guide To Wenhaston Pier 1910".
"Blyth Players" were formed around 1988 and started with a repeat "The Second Pier Show", and later a Southwold Railway theme and Christmas Shows, as did the Womens Institute.
Eastern Angles appeared in the Village Hall from 1982 starting with "The School for Scandal" and performed there twice a year, but now are only to be seen at The Cut. However we still look forward to Circle 67 acting a Shakespeare play at Church Common on a July afternoon.