Milestone year in East Preston

THIRTY years of festivities, fun and fund-raising will be celebrated in East Preston next month.

The village’s popular festival week will reach the milestone during its nine-day programme of more than 90 separate events and activities, opening on Saturday, June 4. It will be a landmark festival, too, for chairman Ray Leggett, his fifth and final one as chairman and his 14th overall as a committee member.

Ray announced at the festival’s annual public meeting in October, 2009 that he would be standing down in two years’ time, and so at the same meeting this autumn, he will hand over the reins to his successor, Paul Amoo, a former village hall committee member.

But before then, there is a festival to run, and Ray and his committee, together with numerous village organisations, have lined up another impressive diary of events to appeal to all ages and tastes, from history to wine tasting, sport to bridge and chess, and from antique valuations to live jazz, or big band music.

The bunting went up in the village on Monday to signal the countdown to the 2011 festival and more than 6,000 official programmes are being distributed throughout the area.

Every year, the festival committee aims to shuffle the pack of the events during the big week, and among the new attractions this time will be an old-time musical review on the opening Saturday with the Allsorts, a vintage radio station and Morse code demonstration on the Monday, guided tours of St Mary’s Church and an open afternoon at the Bradbury Hotel for the blind on the Friday.

Many popular events feature again in the programme, including the quiz night, the British Legion’s Party on the Green on the opening Sunday, the open gardens and art trail and, of course, the carnival procession on Saturday, June 12.

As well as the sheer entertainment value, its worth as a money-spinner for mainly village organisations should not be overlooked – the 2010 festival brought it more than £43,000 to carry on their good work in the community.