Castle Eaton is officially best-kept small village

The results of the CPRE Wiltshire Best Kept Village Competition are announced.

Castle Eaton, Ramsbury and Tilshead and  came top in their respective categories in the countryside charity's awards.

Castle Eaton, near Swindon, entered for the first time in 15 years and topped the category for small villages.

The judges felt that it was “an outstanding village” and as they explored they “...became aware of how spotless the village was….The residents deserve congratulations for the reported 125 bags of litter collected from the roads leading into village in the last year and for their continued diligence.”  

Verges, the judges noted, were perfectly kept but nature conservation was also evident with wild hedgerows, beehives and a hedgehog colony.  

The Red Lion pub had become a village shop during the covid lockdown.  The judges concluded that “...residents have a lot to be proud of … and it is evident that there is a very strong community spirit."

This year’s CPRE Wiltshire Best Kept Village Competition has been sponsored by The Hills Group for an eighth consecutive year. The competition was not held last year due to the Covid pandemic. 

Blunsdon was third in the large village category, behind Ramsbury and Whiteparish.

The first round of the competition saw the expert judging teams from the Wiltshire Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and from Wiltshire Council putting each village under the microscope in May and June. A total of 39 villages throughout the county were tested against the competition criteria which include tidiness, cleanliness, presentation, conservation and village community spirit. 

As ever, the judges found that the parish councils and their volunteers had clearly been hard at work, achieving encouragingly high standards and making the judges’ task that much more difficult.  

The winning six villages from 2019 and 2018 were, as dictated by competition rules, not allowed to compete in the main competition but were invited to enter the Laurence Kitching Award, sponsored by Princeton Homes and often called the ‘Winner of Winners’ competition.  

Mike Manson, the CPRE Project Officer responsible for running the Competition, said: “It is important to point out that this competition could not take place without the very generous contributions of our sponsors, the support of Wiltshire Council, the large team of volunteer judges and of course the immense hard work put in by individual parish councils and villagers. 

"It is a joint effort but one we feel benefits Wiltshire and in particular the participating villages.”