WHITLEY has been crowned as the ‘Best Kept Village’ in West Wiltshire.
The village came top in the ‘medium village’ category in the annual Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) Wiltshire Best Kept Village Competition. In the ‘large village’ category, Holt placed 4th and Bowerhill placed 5th.
Whitley will now move to the next round where it will compete to be named Wiltshire’s Best Kept Village in the medium category.
Volunteers from the Community Action Whitley & Shaw (CAWS) group have been working tirelessly to prepare the village for judging. The group recently completed work converting a decommissioned BT phonebox on Top Lane, into a community library, which the group believes played a large part in them winning the top spot.
Chair of CAWS, Mike Booth, told Melksham News, “We are over the moon! CAWS has a long history of entering the competition – Shaw has done well in the past. But this year we didn’t want to have two villages competing against each other, and with the phonebox project finished, we thought Whitley had a strong chance to do well. We hoped that the judges would notice the new phonebox community library as a great community amenity, so we are pleased that this paid off. Hopefully we can go on to win in the next round of judging, which should take place in July.
“CAWS would like to say a big thank you to Brian Roberts, who put a lot of hard work into preparing our application for the competition – it was quite lengthy and very detailed.”
CAWS will officially launch the new phonebox community library during this weekend’s summer fair on Saturday 22nd June. Other events will be held at Shaw Village Hall from 1pm to 4pm. There will be a barbecue, licensed bar, fun dog show, bouncy castle, face painting, village games, rock ‘n’ roll dancing, live music and much, much more.
For more information about CAWS or to enquire about joining the group as a volunteer, email: shaw_and_whitley @aol.co.uk; or call Mike on 01225 703316.