Clayhidon

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Live music and beers galore at Moonstock festival
It’s Moonstock time at Clayhidon again.  The Half Moon Inn’s fifth Annual Beer & Music Festival starts at 5pm this Friday (May 25) and ends on Sunday night. There’ll be live music from local bands such as Big Knight Out, pictured above, local legend Alex Hart and new talent Darren Hodge.  A very different style of mellow rock comes from Peter Bruntnell, there’s Celtic folk from Trefellas and this year for the first time jazz from the Hot Club Jazz Trio.
Festival goers can sample dozens of real ales from  the South West, served straight from the cask, and several local ciders. In an all weather marquee, bands will play every day until late. Hog Roast, BBQ & Local sausages will be available throughout the period, alongside the summer menu available indoors.  This year’s chosen charity is the Friends of Churchstanton School. >Click here for more information.

Fireworks, beacon and a barbecue planned for Queen's Diamond Jubilee
Clayhidon aims to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee on June 4 in style – with a beacon, firework display and barbecue.
The beacon – on Ridgewood Common – will be one of a chain of nearly 3,000 being lit across the country and the Commonwealth from 10pm, culminating in the Queen lighting the national beacon in London at 10.30pm.
Entry will be free by invitation, including a hog roast (or sausages for children), a bouncy castle, and a presentation of jubilee mugs to all children of the parish under 16. There will also be a cash bar.
The cost of the event is being underwritten by Clayhidon Parish Council. Donations will be welcomed to help defray costs and to enable the council to subsidise future events. The site is provided by permission of Phil and Thelma Blackmore.
The event, currently being planned by a Parish Council subcommittee, starts at 7pm and will cater for all age groups. Volunteer helpers are asked to call Maurice Bendle on 680665.
A special book listing all the beacon sites for the jubilee, including Clayhidon, will be given to the Queen after the event and will join similar books in the Royal Library.
To arrange an invitation call Nicola Bendle on 680541 or Heather Drew on 680300.
There will be a parish jubilee service at St Andrew’s Church, Clayhidon on Sunday June 10 at 11am. This will be held jointly with Rosemary Lane Chapel and all are welcome.

Floods bring a soggy end to drought After the drought, the deluge. New islands, rivers and lakes appeared in the fields of Clayhidon at the end of April as the Culm became a raging torrent, burst its banks and (above) submerged the footbridge at the ford. The floods are the worst in the valley for years. N.I.Agara has kindly sent more photographs, with this message: "Herewith further evidence of how we are struggling to cope with the continuing drought in Devon following another night without precipitation. We are stoic in the face of this ongoing trial . . . thank heavens for the hosepipe ban. Let us all continue to pray for rain." >Click here for more pictures by N.I.Agara and others.

Worshippers take to the pub
Worshippers swopped the church for the pub to mark Rogation Sunday in Clayhidon on May 13. They started the annual Rogation Sunday service in St Andrew’s, then walked through the passageway of the Half Moon Inn to exercise an ancient right of the church.

After singing a hymn the congregation moved to the pub garden, then to Garlands Bower, before walking to the Rectory garden and finally back to the churchyard.
In past times the Rogation Sunday ceremony involved "beating the bounds", which meant processing around the boundary of the parish and praying for its protection in the coming year.
>Click here for Pam Reynolds’s slide show. 

Clayhidon's 1,700 virtual visitors
Clayhidon's community website was one year old on March 29. In its first year www.clayhidon.org posted more than 100 local news stories and nearly 1,700 people visited the site.
The busiest month was January, when the site was visited 845 times and attracted many first time visitors, thanks to  the controversy over the Carpetbaggers car rally.

Big Breakfast nets a sizzling profit

The promise of bacon and eggs tempted scores of visitors to Clayhidon parish hall on March 3, when these Cancer Research UK volunteers cooked up another sizzling success for the 2012 Big Breakfast. They raised over £1,000.
Update on Clayhidon's affordable home
Parish Council members, Richard Kalloway and Maurice Bendle attended the MDDC planning meeting to argue the Clayhidon case for retaining the ’Affordable Home’, writes Sue Hay.
MDDC Planning Officers put a proposal to the Planning Committee that the 106 agreement should be removed from The ‘Affordable House’ allowing it to be sold on the open market. They suggested that the Developer should pay the Parish £22,500 in compensation on the grounds there were no parties interested in the house and that the Developer needed to raise capital to enable him to move on.
Clayhidon Parish Council objected strongly to this proposal on the grounds that we would lose the opportunity to have an affordable home in the Parish, the rent/mortgage combination of £640pcm that had been advertised to date was too high to make the property affordable and that the suggested compensation was too small.
Richard and Maurice were given time to make representations to the Planning committee. They suggested that the Developer should be allowed to sell the fourth property on the site (the 106 agreement prevents the sale of this property until the ‘Affordable House’ has been occupied). But that the Parish should be given six months to investigate ways of making the ‘Affordable House’ truly affordable.
The Planning Committee were unanimous in their support for Clayhidon. This has given time for the Parish Council to explore more options. Until now it has been the remit of the Planning Officers to ensure that the conditions of the 106 agreement are met. We need to be proactive.
If there is anyone locally who might be interested in the ‘Affordable House’ PLEASE register your interest asap with both MDDC and the Parish Council.
Cider drinkers are quiz champs again
Clayhidon's most consistently brainy quizzers, the Cider Drinkers (pictured above), won the quiz yet again at Clayhidon parish hall on March 9. But they were closely pressed by the Bits of Fluff (pictured below) in another highly successful event chaired by quiz master Peter Walter.

Food digesters available free
Mid Devon District Council has a supply of Green Cone food digesters which are available free of charge to any household in the District that does not receive a compost waste collection. >Click here for details

Mobile library timetable
We are now carrying the timetable for Devon Libraries' mobile library service to Clayhidon  and other stopping places nearby. >Click here for details. 

Clayhidon linked with Renoir landscapes
Historic paintings of Clayhidon feature alongside works by the great Impressionist masters Monet and Renoir in an exhibition at Exeter’s Royal Albert Museum and Art Gallery. 
“Into the Light: French and British paintings from Impressionism to the early 1920s” includes several paintings of the area by two of the Camden Town Artists group, Robert Bevan and Charles Ginner. They appear together with works by Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sickert, Whistler and others. The exhibition ends on March 11.
A Western Morning News review says: “Clayhidon is an obscure but beautiful place on the Devon-Somerset border, located deep in the Blackdown Hills – which isn't exactly a fact that could lead you to link its patchwork fields with the world famous landscapes of Monet, Pissarro or Renoir… 
“And yet there is Clayhidon – not once, but several times – strutting its rural, leafy, dairy-land stuff upon several canvases that are placed directly alongside paintings by great Impre







 

       

          
       
      Hemyock storm over wind turbine plan
      Plans for a 34m high wind turbine at Highlands Farm,  above the Lickham Valley (just off the road to Dunkeswell) , have provoked a storm of protest in nearby Hemyock. Objectors say it would violate the Upper Culm valley and the AONB. 
      Campaigners have created a link to help fellow objectors register their views with Mid Devon District Council before May. >Click here.

      New taste from the Blackdowns Cheese Co
      A new cheesemaking business has been launched close to Clayhidon. The Blackdown Hills Cheese Company sold its first product – a soft cheese similar to camembert but dipped in cider – during the recent Artisans Trail weekend.
      Run by Julie Wing, it is based at Higher Berehill Farm, Churchstanton.
      She calls herself “an artisan farmhouse cheesemaker”, and her range of specialist cheeses is made from milk produced at the farm next door. It’s available from local farm shops and delicatessens. >Click here for contact details.

      Council complains about Ford Street ice
      The problems of running water and ice at the top of Ford Street have been raised with Somerset County Council by Clayhidon Parish Council. Other issues discussed at the latest parish council meeting include speeding traffic on parish lanes, footpath improvements and erosion of the Hidewood Ford. >Click here for more.

      How to catch the mobile library 
      Did you know that a Devon mobile library makes regular stops at Clayhidon ?
      It gives local access to books, audio books, large print and DVDs to people who cannot easily reach one of the county’s 50 static libraries.
      Membership is free and no ID is needed. You can join at any age, and even babies are welcome.
      There is no charge for borrowing books. DVDs can be hired from as little as £1 for a fortnight.
      Non-fiction books, large print and children’s books can be reserved free. You can even reserve books online and collect them from the mobile library.
      Children have extra fun joining the Book Track and Summer Reading Challenge. 
      It calls at Clayhidon every fortnight on a Thursday. >Click here for stopping places and times.
      Safari postponed  
      The Friends of St Andrew's Clayhidon Safari Lunch, planned for Saturday April 28, has been postponed until Friday September 14, when it will be run in the evening as a Safari Supper.

      Parish minutes
      >Click here to read the minutes of the 2012 Clayhidon annual parish meeting.

      Trip to Knightshayes
      Clayhidon Local History Group visited Knightshayes Court, home of former Conservative Chancellor Derick Heathcoat-Amory. >Click for more

      Who knows more?
      This is the stylish looking Finch family, photographed outside Andrew's Church, Clayhidon around 100 years ago. Does anyone know more about them? >Click here for Clayhidon Local History Group.

      Why move here?
      The Glover family from Cheshire are house hunting in the Blackdowns and think Clayhidon looks good. Can you tell them what's special about the pariish? >Click here for their email.

      Sell-out success for Thunderbridge boys
      The Thunderbridge Bluegrass Boys gig at the Parish Hall on March 23 was a sell-out and made a £751 profit for hall funds. 
      Organiser Bee Hill said afterwards: “The hall was rocking to the sound of fine music - the band was just amazing and certainly there was plenty of laughter, whooping and foot stamping as well as richly deserved applause that gave rise to three encore songs at the end of the gig. Feedback from many folk said ‘the best gig yet’."
      They are likely to be back for another performance next year. >Click here for Action Packed Month at the Parish Hall

      Clayhidon's Chris wins Gold for England
      Chris Hay of Clayhidon is raised shoulder high after helping the England Men’s Epee team win Gold in the Junior (U20) Commonwealth Fencing Championships.
      In the final pairing of the match, Chris, who fences with Wellington Swords, was under enormous pressure to beat the Canadian number one and reigning Commonwealth Champion. The crowd in St. Helier, Jersey went wild as he did it in style by a margin of nine to three, giving the team a 45 – 35 win.
      Earlier England’s three-man team had secured a bye through to a quarter final match against South Africa, winning 45- 25 to meet a Scotland team determined to beat ‘the auld enemy’ This was a tough match, which England won 45 - 38 to take a place in the final against Canada, who had dominated the competition in their half of the draw.
      Chris, a student at Bath University, has a busy time ahead. He will be representing GB at the Junior European Championships in Porec, Croatia on the March 7 and at the Junior World Championships in Moscow in April.

      Have you got news?
      If you have news of a Clayhidon event and would like to use this website to publicise it, or if you have any local information or pictures worth sharing, email websiteclayhidon@gmail.com   or call Gareth or Alison on 681093.

      Rebels remembered 
      When the Clayhidon Friends visited the refurbished Taunton Museum they found themselves  in the room where the supporters of the Monmouth Rebellion were held before their execution and transportation. >Click here for details.

      Family announcements 
      We have a new page on the parish website - Family Announcements. To share your  family news >click here.

      Beacon for the Queen
      A beacon is to be lit in Clayhidon on Monday June 4 to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Plans for a parish celebration are being made, including family entertainment event in the evening of Monday 4th June. Details to follow, meanwhile please put the date in your diary. >Click here for Parish Council report.

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