This week's group run saw us get truly down and dirty as we descended to the basement at AFC Heatham House to tidy out the cellar!

Starting with a welcome for first-timer Ellen, and a 3km run from the Tap, we arrived at the impressive Heatham House front door to find out what the evening held in store. Heading down to the cellar we discovered others who had arrived just before already hard at work pulling crates, equipment and a myriad of different objects out of the cavernous rooms to the corridor. The room has been used as a dumping ground for a long time, with the best of intentions, and was too much of a job for anyone to get done alongside working with the kids who make the most of the AFC facilities.

Objects found included a banana pen, disco balls, a dead mouse, an old sports quiz and two crates of collapsible cups!

In an excellent example of how GoodGym can work at its best, just 50mins later our work amounted to nearly 11 hours of combined manpower and the room had a lot more order and space by the time we left to run back to the Tap.

Another second Monday group run, back at our sponsored plots in Buccleuch Gardens, Richmond for a whole lot of gardening plus a bit of time travel back to Buccleuch Gardens in the 1760s to celebrate Black History Month.

After a group run led by Liz from the Tap Tavern, everyone started a short session of watering, weeding and sweeping at The Three Pigeons Plot before heading en masse to the Arcade.

Before starting work at the Arcade, Anita shared some local history information about an extraordinary Georgian Gentleman , Charles Ignatius Sancho, who had once lived and worked on the same spot some 260 years previously. Born on a slave ship in 1729, Charles Ignatius Sancho escaped slavery through the protection and patronage of John 2nd Duke of Montagu and his family, going on to become a man of letters, a composer and finally a man of property, owning a grocery and tea shop in Westminster. Sancho spent some of his life at Buccleuch House (originally called Montagu House or Montagu Villa) as valet to John’s son-in-law George Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan and Duke of Montagu. The Arcade, built in the 1930s, marks the place where Buccleuch House once stood. https://www.museumofrichmond.com/wp-content/uploads/Ignatius-Sancho-Teachers-Resource.pdf

Returning to the 21st century, there was time for watering, removing graffiti, turning the compost heap and building willow plant supports, before heading back to the Tap Tavern for our monthly social.