A MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR
Help Shape the Fun Side of our u3a in 2026!
We’ve had lots of enquiries about social events, and it’s clear our members are keen to get out, meet up, and enjoy time together. To make that happen, we’re now looking for enthusiastic members to help create our Social Programme for 2026.
Our previous Social Committee completed their term at last October’s AGM, so this is a great opportunity for a small, friendly team to step in and plan a handful of enjoyable events for the year ahead.
What’s involved?
- Working together as part of an informal team
- Organising up to six social events between April and October
- Ideas might include coach trips, walk-and-talk outings, or other relaxed summer activities
- No team leader required — simply one team member to give a short bi-monthly update to the committee on current and future plans
You’ll be fully supported
- The committee will take care of advertising, bookings, and payments
- Former Social Committee members are happy to offer advice and guidance
u3a is a members-for-members organisation, run by volunteers who help keep it vibrant, social, and welcoming. This is a chance to share ideas, meet new people, and help create events that members genuinely enjoy — without a heavy commitment.
Interested in being part of the fun?
Please consider getting involved and help make 2026 a year to look forward to.
Sybi
Chair Contact form
Considering the cold icy conditions on Monday January 5th we were delighted to welcome 200 members to enjoy Hamish Reid’s talk on the Tale of Nonsuch Palace. A fascinating insight into a once beautiful local landmark. We heard all about the history of the building and how it would have looked during its heyday. It probably would still be standing if Charles II had not gifted it to his mistress Barbara, Countess of Castlemaine who sadly had gambling debts that led to her pulling down the building to sell the materials and pay off her debts.
Our speaker for February will be Harry Venning who will be entertaining us with his presentation The Art Of The Cartoonist.
In January we had the first meeting of the reformed Science Group. This is a collaboration between our Epsom & Ewell u3a together with Banstead and Sutton u3a’s.
The first presentation was entitled What’s in a dram of whisky? We were all very pleased when 87 members arrived to enjoy the afternoon. An excellent presentation by Jim Joannou who certainly knew his subject and answered many searching questions at the end of the presentation.
The next meeting of the Science group will be on Wednesday March 4th when Russell Whitworth will be giving his presentation on Artificial Intelligence.
Message from your Group Leaders
Important message from several of our group leaders
We have been asked by several group leaders to please remind members that if you are a member of a group that requires you to notify your group leader whether you will be attending each meeting please keep in contact.
This is especially problematic for groups that have to set up rooms for board and card games and for walking groups where leaders may be arranging stopping points for coffee and lunch.
A simple email/WhatsApp to say yes or no is all that is required.
Thank you.
Epsom Hot Jazz Club
On February 9th the Jazz Club have booked the Tony Scriven Sunshine Band to entertain the group. Don’t forget this group is meeting at the new venue of St Josephs in Epsom. Full details on the website.
Exploring London 8
For our January walk John was the lead and decided that as the weather may prove problematic an indoor option would be good.
So, we found ourselves heading towards the Royal College of Surgeons which has a really nice café to start our morning, very reasonably priced and as per the picture we noted that the price for lunch was pretty good too. After coffee we headed into the Hunterian Museum for a fascinating morning.
This museum is named after the 18th century surgeon John Hunter (1728-1793) It reopened in May 2023 following a £4.6 million museum development programme. The museum houses England’s largest public display of human anatomy.
On display there are over 2000 anatomical preparations from Hunter’s original collection, alongside instruments, equipment, models, paintings and archive material which traces the history of surgery from ancient times to the latest robot-assisted operations.
A fascinating place to visit, especially when you consider that Hunter predates Darwin and had done an enormous amount of work on the similarities between humans and animals and died before Darwin was even born.
This is a free museum to visit and we would definitely recommend it for a visit.
The u3a matters magazine produced by the Third Age Trust winter edition is now available to view online. The magazine digital version contains lots of interesting articles from u3a's across the country and is published 5 times a year. You can access the current issue via the link above.
Our new Padel Tennis group starts this month with a taster session on Monday February 2nd from 9-10 at S3 Sutton.
Full details via the link above.
Group Leader - Jo Robinson
Italian Conversation – Intermediate
This group meets once a month on a Monday afternoon at Bourne Hall in Ewell Village. There are currently 14 members all with differing abilities in the Italian language which means that we usually split into several groups in order that no one feels out of their depth.
The group leader is Peta who grew up in Italy and is assisted by Anna who is a native speaker.
For our January meeting we split in three groups and studied a variety of parts of Italian grammar.
The topics this month included Past Tense and Present Tense and the subjunctive. Sometimes grammar terms can be a bit daunting but we are gradually mastering them.
We finished with a bananagram – see picture – a bit like scrabble but no points on the letters, purely an exercise in remembering and spelling words.
Apologies for the bottom right – we ran out of space on the table to add Trovare which is the verb to find, a couple of words are upside down as we were working from both sides of the table and for Enda we had to use a Z on its side as we had run out of N's.
Language learning can be such fun!!
The latest offering from our Ticket only theatre group is Operation Mincemeat on Tuesday May 12th at the Fortune Theatre, London. £39.50 per person. Full details and booking form via the link.
This group will be meeting for their regular sessions at All Saints, Fulford Road on February 11th and 25th.
Thursday 23rd July - Bridge Theatre, London
£49.50 per person
Full details and booking form via the link.
Sinatra The Musical
We have requested seats for this new show opening in London in June 2026. Tickets will be £50 per person.
Full details and booking form will be on the website as soon as the theatre confirm our date and ticket allocation.
Our group is an Exploring London Group where we focus on the built environment, both modern and historic.
In the winter, we tend to visit a large public building and look at it from both the architects plans and the subsequent success in public use.
We meet on the third Wednesday monthly and now have space for new members.
This month we went to Stratford Olympic Park for a first visit to see the Olympic legacy in action. Our focus was on the New V&A Storehouse in Here East which was originally the Olympic Media Centre and constructed in a form that has allowed for conversion to many uses.
We saw the converted building with its novel use as storage and display by the American architects responsible for the Highline in New York. We also saw the rebuilt Kauffman Office designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the 17th-century colonnade from the fort at Agra, India, the Frankfurt Kitchen, even a section of the rebuilt council block at Robin Hood Terraces in Poplar.
The V&A (as well as other museums) had been given notice that the warehouse for their items not on display that was located in Kensington was being sold, so had to take steps to find and create another. We found they had achieved this in a marvellously flexible and successful manner. They have turned simple storage into part display and have put some of their best architectural treasures together on display for the first time in many years.
Furthermore, we even managed to talk ourselves into an unplanned visit to the David Bowie archive without tickets!
It was definitely the best way to spend time on a wet and windy day. Do come and join us on our travels.
Garden Wanderers
This month some of the garden visiting group went to RHS Wisley Garden, where we were lucky enough to have reasonable weather for a short while and plenty to look at, including ice fountains!
We took the opportunity when the rain arrived to attend a talk about propagation and visit an exhibition on growing food for display.
Very entertaining on a dull January day.
We have recently been notified by some of our group leaders that they are receiving marketing emails from a company called ActiveCrete who offer various types of activity holidays.
Unfortunately the ActiveCrete marketing team appears to have been targeting numerous u3a's across the country with emails using the contact forms set up on our websites for members to contact group leaders. We are aware that they targeted our walking group leaders at the end of 2025 and more recently our Art group leaders received unsolicited emails.
This is unacceptable and we have notified them that they should use the appropriate channels to advertise, ie pay for advertising in the u3a matters magazine in the same way that other holiday companies do who would like to attract business from u3a members.
We would like to reassure any group leader that has been targeted that our website is constructed in such a way that personal email addresses are hidden and the Siteworks website uses a Honeypot app to limit spam as much as we can. Unfortunately ActiveCrete is a legitimate company and so their marketing emails are not detected.
Honeypot apps and plugins, act as invisible traps that stop bot spam by adding hidden fields to forms that only automated bots fill out. When this field is filled, the submission is rejected, keeping inbox traffic clean. They are highly effective, user-friendly alternatives to traditional CAPTCHAs.
We will continue to monitor the situation and would appreciate any group leader who is targeted to notify us.