This Festival, held on Saturday, 12th June 1982, was arranged to hold a day of good, old-fashioned low-cost fun for all the family.
The day began with a Tug-o-war across the Willow Brook, with teams from various parts of the village. It didn’t matter much who won the crate of beer prize, providing someone ended up in the brook; a few did, but not as many as people wanted.
The ‘Country Sports’ event was held in the afternoon. Sports included ‘wellie wanging’ seeing who could throw a wellington boot the furthest – five-a-side football, tossing the caber, horseshoe hoopla as well as those much loved old favourites like the three legged, obstacle and egg and spoon races, not forgetting the wheel barrow race, in which children had to ‘push’ dads.
In the early evening, villagers packed into St Mary’s Church to make music or just to listen. The programme was nothing if not electric, ranging from Bach to the 1980’s idea of modern popular music, played on an extraordinary range of instruments. They included the church organ (Bob Davey) , recorders (Kings Cliffe Recorder Group), Flute (Rachel Johnson), Cornet (David Allmark), Cello (Clare Russell), Spinet (Valerie Tee and David Hughes). Anyone who could make music did. Even the village children , dressed in Victorian style costumes, sang a selection of nursery rhymes. To fill the gaps between the musical pieces, Rik Butcher compiled and presented a brief history of the village. To end the concert, Katrina Wilson played ‘Peace’, the winning entry of the Eurovision Song Contest, on her electronic keyboard.
The day was finished off with traditional English barn dancing, with a barbecue in the interval.
Information taken from a report written by Rik Butcher in June 2000 and the 23rd July 1982 copy of the Stamford Mercury.
2018