HOLLYWOOD comes to Fernhurst next month when items belonging to Fred Astaire and Peter Cushing go under the hammer at John Nicholson’s auction house.

A monogrammed dressing gown and an Oxford blue overcoat have been consigned for the sale, on Saturday, December 12, by Astaire’s daughter Ava with estimates between £100 and £150.

The same guide prices apply to two multiple lots relating to the Hammer Horror film star, comprising a green canvas and leather-trimmed suitcase and Travelite patent suitcase are offered together as a single lot, and also one of Cushing’s three-piece suits, a blue check jacket, blue trousers and two cardigans.

Also up for auction are Cushing’s paints, his theatre make-up and a selection of games and puzzles, and signed photographs of Gracie Fields, dated 1941 and 1972, Woody Allen and Tallulah Bankhead.

Online bids can be registered at www. the-saleroom.com

FERNHURST in the 1940s proved to be a popular talk for members of the village archive society, who bought in photos and records, plus news cuttings about the development of an ICI Plant Protection HQ, later Zeneca, then Syngenta.

Fernhurst Society director Christine Maynard talked about the wartime evacuees, houses with no running water or electricity, rationing, home-grown everything, the canning machine, the WRVS, Fernhurst poaching patrol, and also ‘Ropes’, a house coveted by German foreign minister Ribbentrop, that was used as a hostel for the less well-behaved with the phone number Fernhurst 4.

lThe society held a brief AGM in the village hall yesterday (Thursday), at 7.30pm for 8pm, followed by a talk on The Historic Dockyard at Chatham by Ian Garnett, a trustee of the dockyard.

PRIMARY schools in Surrey are being invited to take part in a number of music festivals across the county by Surrey Arts.

The festivals attract audiences in excess of 10,000 and offer pupils the chance to sing in some of the county’s largest venues, including Charterhouse School arts centre, at Godalming, on Monday, March 21. All performances at 7pm. Call Surrey Arts on (01737) 737734.