Gander History

The idea for the Gander started in 1987 when a leaflet was delivered to every household in the Parish, to provide details of the eighteen candidates standing in Parish Council elections that autumn. From the very beginning the intention was to be fair to everyone and represent the people of the whole village. There may be less voting going on today, but we still aim to cover all the issues concerning Goxhill right now and encourage residents to get involved.

This election leaflet also carried an invitation to anyone interested in forming a regular village newsletter, to attend a meeting in the Parish Rooms. This resulted in the formation of a committee called Goxhill Community Newsletter Group whose responsibility it would be to produce Goxhill's own newspaper.

So back in 1987, once it was clear a village newsletter was a good idea for Goxhill, the leadership team's first task was to find a name for the publication. Numerous ideas were suggested, but eventually 'THE GANDER' was chosen at the suggestion of Alan Gould, based on his entirely erroneous belief that the word 'Goxhill' had evolved from an earlier name of 'Goose Hill'. In the late Ron Parker's Jottings he believed the village name was originally Golse, and later became Goose Hill and then shortened to Goxhill.

Later, was it pointed out by the late Maurice Brawn that one early Saxon name for this village had been 'Gouzle', and he believed, based on historical records, it is more likely that the modern name actually derives from the Norman Lords of the Manor in Goxhill, the De Gouxil family. In fact there have been many versions of this name and spelling over the years, from Gosla, Gosel, Gausla, Gowsill, but it was first called Goxhill in 1462. By then the paper had been named 'THE GANDER' which stuck!

You can read the article of How Goxhill got it's name by Maurice Brawn in the Goxhill History section.

The first editor of The Gander was Laurence Boxer, with Carol Thornton the advertising manager and Alan Gould, Group Secretary. Michael O'Leary followed shortly after to begin his long and reliable contribution as Treasurer. Ten A4 pages were typed on to duplicator wax skins and 600 copies were rolled off on Alan's ancient Roneo duplicator.

2007 was a big year, celebrating the Gander's 20th Anniversary edition and embracing the digital age. The domain Goxhillgander.com was purchased in 2006 and the original Website was launched in early 2007, maintained by Stan Robertson. PDF copies of the Gander have been uploaded ever since. Over the years, the website grew to include village history and the village maps, with the aim to one day become a vital resource for the village.

By 2007, the Gander artwork was produced digitally, 1,100 copies were published and delivered free by a dedicated team of volunteers. Printed by Newton's of Barton-upon-Humber, originally in black only on Litho printers (which they no longer have), then by 2020 became digitally printed with between 32 to 40 A4 pages in total.

Cover designs varied occasionally, but it remained pretty much the same until 2013 when the first full cover photos were produced with a more commercial magazine look.

The Gander later expanded to 48 pages, occasionally 52 for special occasions, with 8 colour pages.

From 1996 to summer 2004, the newsletter was edited by Richard Owen with Mike Gathercole as coordinator, until Autumn 2004 when Adam Ellis officially became the Editor for the next 5 years, leaving in Summer 2009. This dedication pales in comparison to the long standing Jeff Teasdale who then worked tirelessly as the editor for the next 16.5 years, along with John Noton who has stood by the Gander as treasurer for even longer! Supported by the rest of the Gander Team.

In 2026, Everything is changing, most notably with the announcement of Jeff Teasdale retiring at the age of 80, stepping down from being the editor, which means the team needs to expand to fill about 10 hats that Jeff wore alone. We now need more volunteers than ever before, from admin and simple proof reading, technical roles and the all important distribution, but the Gander is nothing without your contribution of articles and gathering content.

My desk never looks this tidy!!!!!!

19 years have passed since GoxhillGander.com was born. Technology has advanced, therefore the website and server technology it was built on had long surpassed its use by date and functionality was breaking down. The website had not received any updates for a very long time, other than uploading a new PDF every quarter.

New Tech: Alex and Rose Williams moved into the village in 2025, own a company specialising in building modern web platforms (Goxhill IT), and so they generously offered to host, design and build the new website, reducing the Ganders online running costs along with a significant upgrade. Rose Williams also introduced the "Modern Goose" mascot and a "modern classic" font to encourage younger contributors.

The Return to Litho Printing

Now running up to 48 pages, and the significant rise in digital print costs has caused the Gander to be more careful with the number of publications, finding very little room for Gander Grants, we started shopping around. We look forward to changing printers to GKD Print, just over the bridge in Hull. The new issues, starting Summer 2026 will feature a "full bleed" (edge to edge colour) outer cover on higher quality paper and printed professionally on Heidelberg Litho printing presses. The new magazines will "look" more expensive... but they're actually cheaper to produce, which means keeping the Gander Grants scheme alive.

In 2027, only next year, the Gander will have been a much loved Goxhill Village institution for 40 YEARS! with the Summer 2027 issue beign the 160th. It has become more important to preserve this valuable Goxhill History, and therefore, we are currently on a mission to digitally archive every single edition back to 1987 before we reach this milestone.

Once the magazines are digitised, we have AI technology available to scan and provide a synopsis, but the result is often americanised and corporate. To preserve the community and human touch that is invaluable to us, we would like human volunteers to take an edition, or an AI summary to redo, and write a synopsis of 200 - 300 Words.

After 40 years of the printed edition, it is never the intention to become an online-only magazine. We are looking to only summarise the content to make them easier to locate. From time to time there may be online articles that did not reach print in its full form or very specific articles of interest.