The Friends of St Mary’s Group in Charlton are Planning a Flower Festival between Saturday May 24 and Monday May 26 between 10am and 4pm.

Committee Member Geoffrey Booth said:

“We got the Friends of St Mary's group properly constituted at the tail end of last year and we were looking at different ideas that would actually begin to bring the group together properly.

“So we've got a committee of six and we really need to leverage off those six and bring in the whole of the community.

“We've got something like 40 members of the friends group, so we were thinking about what sort of event we could start to organize to involve people, involve them, one bringing them in to participate within the activities, get them more involved in the church as a building, as part of the community, and also look at it as a way of hopefully raising some funds because there's a lot of expenditure that we have to be sure is covered if we want the building to remain open.

Geoff added: “I've had some involvement with local fundraising where I lived before up in Rutland.

“I'd had involvement in village fundraising activities for many years and one year indeed as part of a bigger village fete we organised a flower festival in the church and that did bring a lot of people who just came to see the flower festival.

“That's what they were interested in.

“So I thought maybe that's something that we could replicate here and so we began to put the plans together.”

“They will be approaching businesses, individuals, societies and the school for displays.

They have been very successful in quickly getting a bigger group of volunteers who are now coalescing around this event.

“We've got somebody who's coordinating the displays, somebody who's coordinating the refreshment side of it and we're beginning to launch our publicity, our publications, trying to get online, trying to get the word out about the event.

“We see it very much as a three-day event over the Whitsun weekend, with the benefit of bringing our community into the building, but also having the opportunity, as that's a peak holiday period, of bringing outsiders in to see the church as well.

We're planning to have refreshments available throughout. We have already got three volunteer organists and they'll perform during the opening times on the three days.

“We're hoping also to get the bell ringers in to have some bell ringing going on, because not only does it sound great, but if you actually watch them when you're in here, it's something that particularly the kids will find very enjoyable.

“So we're aiming to make this a family event.

“We're involving the school right from the start in the form of display.

“We're also thinking about some activities during the event to keep the school going to keep the kids amused as well and make sure it's not just an adult event but a family event.”