Wow! This year’s Chelsfield Village Fair has been a resounding success. On a beautiful sunny day around 2,000 paying adults and at least as many children under 14 enjoyed free entrance to see the flying displays, birds of prey displays, Force 10 Big Band, Croydon Steel Orchestra, the Green St Green May Queen, all the fun of the fair, complete with a Fun Fair! The fair is definitely the biggest, best and most prestigious event of its type in the area.

This year’s event raised over £10,000 for charities and local good causes allowing us to make the following donations:

South East London Breast Cancer Trust - £6,000

*Village Defibrillator/**Village Hall - £2,410

The House Martins - £800

St Martin of Tours Church - £1,200

Well Hill Mission Church - £800

Chelsfield Village School - £800

* £4,000 donated by the fair with a further £2,000 matched funding provided by Barclays directly as a result of the efforts of members of their staff Scott Petrie and Mark O'Reilly

** A total of £2,700 (including hall rental) towards the purchase of a defibrillator for the village to “top-up” the great fundraising efforts of Peter and Catherine Gandolfi at the fair, with the remainder going towards replacement of the Village Hall windows.

In addition there were over 30 charity stalls at the Fair all of whom have said that they had a very profitable day.

As usual the flying displays (a Spitfire and an Extra 330 aerobatic plane) were the star attractions of the Fair. This year the flying displays cost in excess of £4,000 and were entirely funded by the Chelsfield Flying Club together with our Commercial Sponsor, WJ King Group. The Chelsfield Flying Club consists of local people who choose to make donations towards the flying displays, this year they were; N & M Lamb, K & A Stone, P Temple, Vincent & Partners, R Walters, T & D Lloyd, Mr and Mrs Leech, H Gould, S Fuller, A Betts, Mr Sims, P Lane, D Padilla, C Reynolds, A Mead, J Tranter, T Glaum, G Maynard, A Johnson, JJ Brookes, M Pring. N Cash, P Townsend, S King, P & M Lamond. There was also a substantial donation from the regulars at the Five Bells pub.  This generosity allows us to provide great entertainment whilst not detracting from our fundraising efforts.

We would also like to thank JJ Brooks Construction, G3 Joinery Ltd, G J Day Electrical Ltd and P A Townsend Butchers Ltd for generously donating £425 in Raffle prizes. A big thank you also goes to Mark Hussey for donating the printing of the raffle tickets.

We would also like to thank; Pauline’s Ponies, Alan Tabor, Welling and District Model Engineering Society (model train), J Botton (Fun Fair) and Tonibell Ice Creams for their generous donations and also Mike Delaney Skills Academy.

The Fair is a large undertaking. There were over 50 helpers who gave up their day to make the Fair a huge success; manning the gates, directing traffic, running the bar and tea rooms etc. The full list of people is too numerous to mention here but we thank you all! We would also like to thank the 5th Petts Wood Scout Troop who did a wonderful job of running the car parks for which a donation of £300 was made. We’d also like to thank Kay and Ade Stone who provide the bar licence, lend us their gazebos and provide us with copious quantities of ice during the day.

The £1,000 cost of advertising the event including the programmes and flyers in the local papers was entirely funded by our advertisers. Lockyer Motors and Chelsfield Motor Works co-sponsored the Programme and there were further contributions from; Skills Academy Ltd, The Five Bells pub, The Bo-Peep pub, Langford Rae Van Bergen, Brinds Well Day Nursery, Chelsfield Flooring Ltd, Spitfire Café, Owen Pine & Oak, Prestige Cars Kent, Clive Reynolds Autos, Partyzilla-Inc., Townsend Butchers, G3 Joinery, J.J. Brooks Construction and WJ King Group.

There are significant costs associated with putting on the fair, notably: Field Hire £1,000 (paid to Chelsfield Cricket Club), Village Hall Hire £290 (paid to the Village Hall Society), Event Insurance and the St John Ambulance cover £600, Marquee and Bar Hire £1,000, Toilets and Skip hire £800 and the various entertainers cost in excess of £1,000 as well as over £3,000 paying for all the food and drink that we sell on the day. These costs make the surplus raised for our headline Charity and local good causes all the more impressive.

The Village Fair Committee would also like to thank the Church for the use of their field as a car park and Jane Parkes for letting us use her field as a car park, which this year due to the Fair’s popularity was also needed for customers as well as local residents and exhibitors. Thanks also go to all those who made individual donations of food and cakes and paid other bills out of the kindness of their hearts including; Sharon King, David Griffiths, David Padilla, John Brooks, Peter Townsend, Nigel and Maria Lamb, Lester and Henrietta Barnes, Tammy Pender, Pam Ames, Julie Sparkes and Petra Cocks.

Every year the Fair also donates the wreath for the memorial on Chelsfield Green on Remembrance Day and the Christmas tree for the Village.

We appreciate that the Fair is a huge disruption to the Village and would like to thank all of the residents who graciously put up with the annual kerfuffle.

If you have any funding requests, suggestions for our headline charity or other local projects for next year we would love to hear about them as we are always on the lookout for local good causes and we need to choose a headline charity for next year’s fair.

We wish Anne Mead a swift recovery following her surgery and subsequent complications and look forward to her speedy return to the Village Fair Committee.

The Fair has been at the core of the Village social calendar for more than 15 years and there have been many committees involved in its planning and delivery over the years. It is with considerable sadness that we take this opportunity to express our gratitude to one of the founding organisers, Bob Hogben who, despite ill-health managed to attend this year’s Fair but has since passed away. He will be sadly missed and we extend our deepest sympathies to his family and friends.

Peter Lamond
Chairman on behalf of Chelsfield Village Fair Committee.