The fete this year (2013) was held at Malverleys, East End and we would like to thank Georg and Emily von Opel for their generosity, particularly allowing 2 groups of visitors to be taken round the newly developing gardens.
St Martin’s Guild was founded in 1908 as a means to provide funds for the church, by the sale of needlework by its members. Over the last 100 years the Guild fete in East Woodhay has become not only the best known fete in the area, but the main source of much needed funds for the upkeep and maintenance of St Martin’s Church, as well as financial support for local groups, organisations and village projects. In recent years we have helped with financing the resurfacing of the tennis court at Heath End, refurbishment of the playground at Heath End, supporting the EW WI as well as consistently contributing to St Martin’s School. All the money raised is donated within the Parish.
This year Colin Thomas brought his dog agility team providing a 45 minute demonstration in the central arena. This was followed by a fun dog show, with 3 classes; ‘dog with the best wag’,’ best puppy’, and ‘dog the judge would like to take home’. Once the dogs had cleared we finished up with children’s races – we even had an ‘over 21’s’ sack race.
There was a superb vintage car display, provided by proud local owners and the Hampshire Police came with their police car, sirens blazing and bravely allowed children to climb all over it
Our stalls and sideshows included Sarah Porter’s renowned plant stall and a hugely successful raffle both of which raised over £2,000. Innovations this year were a beer and Pimms tent, which was very popular and the old White Elephant stall renamed themselves the East Woodhay Artisans, augmenting their usual wares to include beautiful handmade gifts, which takes us right back to the origins of the fete!
The Guild committee would like to thank everyone who was involved and contributed to the setting up and running of the fete; we have brilliant stallholders, tea ladies and sideshow helpers, without whom we would not be able to put on such a successful event. Thank you all, we would be lost without our band of stalwart workers.
Particular thanks should also go to our sponsors, whose generous donations covered all the fete expenses so that everything we made on the day is available for distribution.
We are delighted to report that once all the final costs had been settled we made an overall profit of just over £11,500. From this we have made donations to:
- St Martin’s PCC – to go into the St Martin’s Guild Fund, which finances the upkeep, maintenance and repairs of the church.
- East Woodhay WI – to help towards the costs of their guest speakers.
- Community First Responders – to cover the cost of a second pager for 3 years
- East Woodhay and Highclere Neighbourcare – to contribute towards the cost of running their website.
If you know of a local community project or activity which would like to be considered for a donation, please contact Sarah Ede or any of the committee members.
Sarah Ede