Northants ACRE Best Village Competition 2010 Awards Evening

Published on 22nd September 2010 8:10am

This news relates to Hartwell Village (General)

For the first time in many years, Hartwell entered the Northamptonshire Best Village Competition

Hartwell Parish Council decided to enter this year's best village competition. Hartwell has entered before and WON (1998) so they thought that as we are about to embark on producing a Parish Plan, it might be an idea to see what 'outsiders' thought of the the village and what the community has to offer. The judges visited Hartwell back in July.

The awards evening, attended by Simon (Parish Council Chair), Emma (Parish Council Clerk) and myself (Parish Plan Chair / Website), was held at the Hunsbury Hill Centre in Northampton.

After an introduction from David Scudamore, Chair of Northamptonshire ACRE (and Chair of Judges), there was a photo slide show where we had to guess which village each photo was from - Hartwell's photos were of the "Forest Road" sign opposite the Church, the door of the church, and the row of cottages next to the shop. What surprised us were the number of villages in Northamptonshire we had never heard of!

After the photos there was then the Conservation in Churchyards Awards, presented by Lisa Rowley from Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust - this was a competition Hartwell did not enter this year.

There was a brief presentation on Community Led Planning (i.e. Parish Plans) - Hartwell has just recently embarked on a Parish Plan -see the Parish Plan section of the website for more information.

Finally we came to the awards - there are four categories, Newcomer, Large Village, Medium Village, and Small Village (and finally the Overall 2010 Winner). For each category there is a prize for Highly Commended (3rd), Runner-Up and Winner. Sadly Hartwell (which counts as a medium village) did not win anything this year. (Unfortunately as I didn't recognise most of the villages mentioned, I was not able to write down a list of the actual winners - hopefully a list will appear on the ACRE website soon!)

It has certainly been an interesting process, and it will be useful receiving the feedback from the judges (hopefully this will also be posted on the website).