AN AMBITIOUS project has been launched to unite all the towns around the World called ‘Malvern’, creating one big ‘circle of friendship’.
Malverns Worldwide is the brainchild of Cora Weaver and Bruce Osborne who came up with the idea after they liaised with representatives from Malvern in , Australia, to get a tree planted by literary legend George Bernard Shaw returned to the town.
As part of that project, Di Foster, a representative from Malvern, Victoria, came over and unveiled a plaque to get the replanting of the tree under way.
Since then Cora and Bruce have been researching other places called Malvern around the World and have been building up a database of them – already they have found several in the United States, one in Canada and others in Barbados, Jamaica and Johannesberg.
Cora said: “It’s amazing to think of all these places that share the name Malvern – we have found 24 so far.
“All of them are in former colonies and English speaking countries and we like to think that our Malvern is the forefather and has all these descendents around the World.”
Cora and Bruce are off to Malverne in Long Island, New York, on Friday (October 14) where they will be taking a letter from the district’s mayor.
“We are now extending the hand of friendship to other Malverns around the world and want to take some information from our Malvern to all the other ones and bring back a piece of information about each of them back here.
“We also want to find out why they were all given the name ‘Malvern’ and the history behind them.”
She said the long-term plan was to bring out a Malverns Worldwide booklet which would have a page of information about each one and she said she would also like to do an exhibition about all the different Malverns at the library.
And, in a strange twist, when The Observer caught up with music and TV star Jason Donovan this week, ahead of his appearances at the Malvern Theatre, we found he was brought up in Malvern, Australia – a suburb of Melbourne.
On hearing about the Malverns Worldwide project he said he thought it was a great idea.
“I’ve got a lot of love for Malvern and it’s always interesting to hear of other towns that share the name – let’s link them all together.”
He added both the one in Australia and the one in the UK were ‘beautiful towns’.
Cora added there may also still be Malverns out there that her and Bruce were unaware of.
She said they would love to hear from anyone with any information, facts or photographs relating to any of the Malverns – whether they be the ones the pair know about or ones they had not yet found.
Anyone who has any information on other Malverns or anyone wanting to find out about the project should email [email protected] for more.
