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2009
Christmas Fayre
Visitors to the Christmas fayre were surprised to see a film crew in the village hall, who were there to film the judging of the sloe gin competition for a programme with Oz Clark and Hugh Dennis and is called Oz and Hugh Drink to Christmas. The programme’s subject is Christmas drinks past and present (see how many familiar faces you can spot!). Click here to see it on YouTube!
The film crew in action and Oz Clark & Hugh Dennis check the judging criteria for the sloe gin competition.
The fayre was busy, with children visiting Father Christmas in his grotto and enjoying buying from stalls and sampling refreshments. The winner of the sloe gin competition was Ralph Whittaker, who was presented with a trophy and certificate at the carol singing in the evening and will join the judging panel at next year’s competition. Ralph's sloe gin was awarded an average 17/20 and was judged to be clear, smooth, sweet and well balanced with an extended flavour. Second was Louise Grant and third ws Oz Clark (or rather a member of his production team!).
Liz McCarron Heal, Liz Allen & Linda Durno judge the sloe gin competition. Winner, Ralph Whittaker
The winner of the Guess the Weight of the Christmas cake was Barbara Fenner, Bill Skinner won Tingles the clown and the winners of the children's Christmas scene competition, each receiving a £5 book token, were:
The Duchess of Cornwall visits Kington St MichaelUnder 5s: Florence Hayes
Age 5 - 12: Iona Durno
Best overall effort: Amy Jenkins
Winners of the children's competition for best Christmas scenes, Amy & Iona, and
Father Christmas in his wonderful grotto.
The Duchess of Cornwall, Patron of Community First (recently amalgamated with Youth Action Wiltshire), visited Kington St Michael Village Hall on 11th May 2009. Her Royal Highness learned about the charity’s activities and met local residents and members of community groups who use the hall. She was presented with a bouquet by Doyle, who attends Acorns pre-school. Her Royal Highness also toured the village shop before leaving to a farewell from local schoolchildren and villagers. ( Click here to see a report on the This Is Wiltshire website.)
HRH meets local schoolchildren. Milk from the shop for the occasion or has someone elevated Kay's status?!!
(Photos courtesy of Matt Bridger)
Local children waiting to wave off the Duchess of Cornwall.
(Photos courtesy of Sue & John Wilcock)
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2008
End of an Era
After decades of almost continuous service, sadly Kington St Michael Post Office is no more. Despite its recent resurrection in 2004, following a year without it, our post office was an unlucky victim of the recent round of closures.
The Community Shop currently sells a range of stamps and is hoping to be able to provide a Postal Point in the future, which will provide a daily collection for packets and parcels that are too large to fit into the postboxes. Registered and recorded delivery facilities would also be provided. News will be on the website once more is known.
Our last sub-Postmaster, Howard Greenman, would like to wish the community shop every success for the future.
2007
VILLAGE SHOP BECOMES COMMUNITY OWNED
The village shop in Kington St Michael has become a community shop, owned by the community and staffed, initially, by volunteers from the village and beyond.
The handover took place on Saturday 28th April and the shop has been spring cleaned and completely rearranged, with new stock coming in over the next couple of weeks. It is also hoped to stock more local products and crafts. Currently the shop offers a good range of food, confectionery and household goods at reasonable prices, a good number of which are lower than those in local supermarkets for identical goods.
The shop is being run as an Industrial & Provident Society (registration number 30226R), with shares available to buy at £5 each and will be known as “Kington St Michael Village Shop Ltd”. Each shareholder will be entitled to one vote.
~*~*~*~*~KSM ENVIRONMENT AWARENESS DAY
This event was held on Saturday, 3rd March, and turned out to be a great day.
The object was to get people thinking about the environment, the dangers of climate change and the steps we ought to be taking to minimise the danger – especially for the younger generations who will bear the brunt of the problems.
Alex Lockton, Chairman of ‘CAVE’ (Chippenham and Villages Environmentalists) gave a number of talks on the dangers and ways to address them. The first step for everyone is to improve the insulation of your home.
There were displays by WWF and WCC on Waste Reduction, Recycling and Composting, Real Nappies, car-sharing, Wind-turbines, Photo-voltaic generation (electricity from sun-light) and Sustrans encouraging cycling. Local displays included eggs, jam and produce grown in the village, heating controls from Celect Electrical (a village company), a photographic display showing the activities of The School Environment Club and the first public viewing of the Parish Plan.
Probably the most popular event was the Children’s Junk Modelling - making things from free junk! This was the ultimate in re-cycling and Angie and John were kept on their toes all day coping with the stream of young customers.
All in all a great day and our village contribution to saving the planet!
2006
Bonfire Night & Fireworks, 4th November.
A crisp clear evening was perfect weather for the bonfire night at the Rec, with the event being well supported by villagers and friends. The firework display was well organised with Catherine wheels and fountains at ground level filling gaps between rockets and huge glittery explosions above everyone’s heads. There was a separate ‘safe’ area for children to twirl their sparklers and a really big bonfire. The "Best Guy" competition was won by Jessica & Rebecca Baker. Hot dogs, toffee apples and sweets were on sale with beer and mulled wine for the grown ups. For the finale there was fire juggling by talented villager, Mike Ferguson. Thank you to everyone who supported this event, which raised £792 for Recreation Field Funds.
2005
ACORNS PRE-SCHOOL EARNS AWARD
Acorns Pre-School has been presented with the "Investors in People" award in November 2005, following a lot of hard work by the staff and committee. Investors in People is the national standard which sets out a good level of practice for training and development of people to achieve business goals(www.investorsinpeople.co.uk). Well done to Acorns.
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WELCOME LOTTERY AWARD BOOST FOR KINGTON ST MICHAEL VILLAGE HALL
October 2005: The villagers and wider community of Kington St Michael are today celebrating a successful grant award of £3,000 from the National Lottery’s Awards for All programme.
The money will go towards the renovation of the Victorian Village Hall floor, which is now, after many years of good use, in need of some refurbishment. The hall is widely used by the community and, in particular, Acorns Pre-school, Music & Movement Group, Autumn Club, WI, the local Church, Youth Club, and many others.
Chair of the Village Hall Committee, Jo Palmer, said: “This is fantastic news for our community. The village hall is at the heart of village activities and offers such a great venue for the young and old alike. We can now look forward to providing a hall that is not only a traditional venue but one which can cater for today’s needs. The Committee and village have worked extremely hard to raise funds for the floor renovations and to secure the lottery funding. We are looking forward to spending it!”
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Family Fun Day - 27th August 2005 
Despite the overcast sky a good number of villagers turned out for the Fun Day. One gentleman said that it was a ‘‘real English village afternoon’’. Two heats of “It’s A Knockout” took place and the Pet Parade proved popular with some novelty classes including: pet the judge would most like to cuddle up with, most obedient pet and pet with the longest tail, which was won by a snake! All winners were given a rosette.
The Recreation Field Committee were very pleased with the turn out - one of the aims of the afternoon was to get people up to the Rec to see what has been done and to look at the future plans. The plans were on display for the next proposed phase of Recreation Ground development that includes levelling the football pitch. The Fun Day raised around £290 to go towards this.
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60th Anniversary of VE Day Celebration - Sunday 8th May '05
Thank you to everyone who supported this event and made it the resounding success it was. Almost 100 people came along - some bringing memorabilia, some wearing period costume. Everone enjoyed the afternoon - listening to music of the era, swapping stories and consuming copious quantities of tea and cakes! The WWII Quiz was won by Andrea Baynes, who received a bottle of wine. An amazing £252.85 was raised, divided equally between The Royal British Legion and Acorns Pre-school, which organised the event. On behalf of Acorns, Linda Durno would like to thank everyone who kindly loaned their memorabilia, donated cakes or raffle prizes and/or supported the event.
Looking at memorabilia Enjoying tea & cakes
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VILLAGE CLOCK: Those of you with good memories will recall that there used to be a clock in the window of the Old Village Hall (facing onto the road, next to the telephone kiosk). This had been bought to commemorate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, but sadly it wore out and was irrepairable.
However, due to popular demand, the Village Hall Management Committee has bought a new clock and it has been put up in its rightful place.
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Metal Detecting Rally by Tim Storer
On Sunday the 16th January I organised the second metal detecting rally on the outskirts of the village. People from UK Detector Net (an online metal detecting forum) came from all over the country including a mini bus full from Plymouth who set off at 4 am! A link for the forum is: http://www.forumukdetectornet.co.uk/phpBB2With the sun beginning to shine 47 detectorists set off to various parts of the fields to ferret out the history of the area. The finds slowly began trickling back to the finds table for identification and recording. These details have now been passed to Katie Hinds who is the Finds Liaison Officer for Wiltshire. If required, these will then be recorded under the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Have a look at www.findsdatabase.org.uk for more details on this scheme. The finds dated from the Roman period onwards and some had survived 2000 years of being rolled around by the plough surprisingly well. Unfortunately all the medieval coins had not been so luckily and only small pieces of them were found. In addition, there were numerous coins from 1700 onwards, buttons, a Roman mount, a barrel key and various buckles dating from 1450 onwards. The photos at the end show a late medieval fob seal depicting a running dear, a Roman brooch, a jetton, a medieval mount, and a second Roman brooch.
We raised over £600 from entrance fees and miscellaneous sales, of which £100 has been donated to the fund for the new floor in the village hall and £512 was donated to the Red Cross for the Tsunami appeal.
Once again everyone had a good day and they are looking forward to the next one. As before, I am more than happy to arrange another event to raise money for village charities. The requirement is that there should be around 30+ acres, a field suitable for parking and that the fields are under stubble or rolled/harrowed after ploughing. (To view a report of the rally held on 10th October 2004 please click on the icon:
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