Lytham St Annes Twinning Association

With Lytham St Annes Twinning Association you can benefit from fun and friendship at home and away. They develop and maintains links with the town of Werne, in Germany.

It’s a great way to share your civic pride in where you live, and a great way to enjoy other cultures and foreign ways of life.

Lytham St Annes Twinning Association

This Association was established back in 1981 and has been going strong ever since.

Lytham St Annes is twinned with Werne in Germany. Formal links were developed by a charter signed on 4th May 1984 by Alderman Eric Bamber, then the Mayor of Fylde Borough Council. The Burgermeister in Werne, Franz Joseph Grüsse,, also signed the declaration.

Lytham St  Annes High School and St Christophorus Gymnasium in Werne have excellent links for young people too. Students have exchanged visits every year since 1981.

New links with France

Links are also being developed with the French town of Caudry. Interest was first expressed in 2016 and are progressing well. The group paid a visit to Caudry in March 2017 and they reciprocated with a visit to Lytham St Annes in July 2018.

Over the years since, there has been a lot of activity involving regular  exchange visits.  Many of these visits are recorded in more detail on other pages, and lots of photos are included in the Photo Gallery.

Find out More

Lytham St Annes Twinning Association is an independent group. Their funds are raised through memberships, events and occasional support from Fylde Council and St Annes on the Sea Town Council.

Membership is open to people and organisations wishing to support the aims of the Association for a small annual cost.

If you would like to find out more about this group, or how to join in, see their own website

www.lsatwinning.co.uk

Or email lsatwinning@gmail.com

A Weekend with Friends

In 2014, 39 German visitors from our twin town of Werne spent the St Annes Carnival weekend with the Lytham St Annes Twinning Association.

They attended social events, a civic dinner at the Old Links Golf Club and had a memorable last evening watching their country win the World Cup with our members.

Bratwurst and bangers on your menu with the Twinning Association recipe book.

Published July 2013

Committee member John Regan has been collecting favourite recipes from association members, our counterparts in Werne, and anyone else who wanted to contribute.

These, together with photographs and short anecdotes about the food, are included in the book. Proceeds from the sale of the book will go towards offsetting the cost of hosting visitors from Werne next year to celebrate our 30th anniversary.

The recipe book, called “A Joint Venture” (pictured left) is now complete – it contains 30 recipes in both English and German. A donation of £5.00 – or more! will secure your copy – please email John Regan to get yours at podolipotter@sky.com

More about Lytham St Annes Twinning Association

Background.

In 1981, Fylde Borough Council had received a suggestion for a town link but were unwilling to proceed and referred it to the town’s voluntary bodies. The Lytham St Annes Civic Society took up the challenge and the Lytham St Annes Twinning Association was formed at a meeting attended by 200 representatives from the town’s organisations.

The National Joint Twinning Association then suggested that the town of WERNE in Germany be twinned with LSA and details of each other’s town, population, schools, clubs, churches, etc, were exchanged.

Charter.

There was common consent to trial this for a couple of years and that exchanges with families should begin. So keen were the residents of Werne that a large group of their students came to Lytham only some 3 months after the agreement was reached to twin!

That was the start of the regular student exchanges involving the Queen Mary and King Edward VII schools, Lytham St. Annes High School and St Bedes, Lytham. After some 3 years of exchanges it was agreed to formalise the arrangement, and in 1984 a Charter of Friendship was agreed and signed in separate ceremonies in each town.

Friendships.

Since then, hundreds of friendships between the residents of both Lytham St Annes and Werne have sprouted and grown and numerous exchange visits have taken place. St Christophorus school, Werne has regularly dispatched a coach load of their students to the Fylde and many Twinning Association members act as their hosts while they are here.

Werne residents also act as hosts for students on return visits from our local schools, and many children form lasting friendships with their contemporaries. We have also recently assisted the Ormerod Trust with making contact with a similar German organization in Werne, and hopefully exchanges will blossom through their link.

The Association.

Annual membership is a reasonable fee and membership has fluctuated between 200+ to only 14. This low point then blossomed to 50. Nearly 30 of us attended the Werne 650th anniversary celebration of the granting of its’ market charter and we were marvellously entertained, hosted, fed and very liberally watered.

In return we intend to invite Werne residents to stay here with us in the Summer of 2014 to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the signing of our Twinning Charter with them. In order for us to reciprocate to a similarly high standard of hosting, we have to raise money by various local events, for, unlike Werne, whose local council provides financial and ancillary support to the Werne International Club for all their twinning activities, we have to be self funding.

While you’re here…

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