Friends of St Bartholomew's
The Wigginton Festival 2011
Wigginton Festival 2011
The 2011 Wigginton Festival, organised by the Friends of St Bartholomew’s church, was held on Saturday July 9th. Over 1700 people attended, well up on last year’s 1000 or so. All reckoned it to be the best Festival yet. All profits, some £5400, from the event went to the Friends of St Bartholomew’s and the Iain Rennie Hospice at Home charity.
The festival was once again blessed with fair weather although some of the organisers got a bit wet in the rain in the morning while setting up the various events. But by midday, the rain had cleared, the ground was dry and people started to come in for an afternoon and evening full of fun, music, great food and perhaps the odd snifter or two!
We had ten excellent bands who all gave their time free to the Festival and played to a very appreciative audience of young, middle aged and old. The various attractions included a climbing wall, generously sponsored by AG Evans of Wigginton. It was popular with children and adults alike. Other attractions included children’s rides, a crockery smash stall, stalls selling craft products and jewellery , garden plants, homemade pate’s, a display of 60 wonderful classic cars, , Motor Neurone charity, Solar panel displays and an auction. Items for the auction were kindly donated by Champney’s, Stratstone Aston Martin and Aces High Gallery of Wendover.
The Friends of St Bartholomew’s tent displayed photographs of the refurbishment work undertaken as a result of funding raised by the Friends Group. The tent was shared with Bobbie Clark and Jenny Eggleton who represented the Tariro children’s charity in Zimbabwe.
The beer tent, organised by the Greyhound pub, sold copious quantities of beer, which was supplied by Tring Brewery, and the hog roast was enormously popular. Burgers and cream teas all sold out.
The real highlight was a flypast of a Spitfire. Three passes over the field impressed everyone and brought proceedings to a halt for several minutes while we all stood in wonder at that magnificent aircraft.
The boys and girls of the Tring ATC supported us well. They provided the car parking control and manned their own tent with competitions and photographs of their activities.
Next year the Festival will be held on Saturday 7th July in Wickfield Meadow and will start at 12.00 noon and close at 10.00pm. Again we will have bands and a great array of stalls and other attractions – maybe even Ferret racing!. Watch this space for updates in the spring. Our aim is to make it bigger and even better than this year for the people of the village of Wigginton and surrounding villages, their friends and families and visitors from further afield.
The Festival was only made possible by the efforts of many volunteers who worked tirelessly both before and during the day and we thank them for their sterling work. The festival for 2012 will take a similar amount of effort, so if you would like to volunteer to help us in any way, please do let a member of the organising committee know. We need all the help we can get!
“Eat your heart out Glastonbury”.
Tim Dawson
Chairman
