We don’t have any events planned at present but will update here as soon as we have any news on future events.
Previous events
Apple Pressing Fun Day – Sunday 8th October 2023
A big ‘thank you’ to everyone who supported us by coming along to our third Apple Pressing Fun Day on Sunday 8th October. Held in the beautiful Tithe Barn, the day was a great success once again. It was good to see so many people having a wonderful time, helping us to raise funds which go towards maintaining Trust land and acquiring new pockets of green space around Lenham.
There were well over 400 visitors of all ages, who enjoyed both watching and getting involved in the apple pressing and then taking away freshly pressed juice. Our presses were certainly popular with the younger visitors who wanted to try their hand at pressing. 2023 has not been a great year for apples, so we were happy to turn our hand to pressing a different fruit when a lady brought in lots of grapes that had been growing in her garden!
The barn and grounds were full of things to see and do – stalls, games, music, cakes, cider, The Friends of St Mary’s Church, face painting by Whizzbang Face Painting, a fascinating steam engine and delicious local goodies from Kent Loves…. The surprisingly warm and sunny weather meant it was a perfect day for the BBQ organised by The Rotary Club of the Weald of Kent and ice-cream sundaes provided by The Sweetie Chockie Bickie Company.
Kerry Slevin of Kerry’s Cakes kindly donated a stunning apple tree cake for our Guess the Weight of the Cake competition, which was won by Dee Handy. Dee was just a few grammes over the actual weight of 2kg 365g. Gavin Redmore was the happy winner of Guess the Number of Sweets; Gavin’s guess of 241, was closest to the actual total of 244. We had a fabulous display of autumnal artwork by Year 7 from The Lenham School; thank you to Year 7 for their wonderful pictures which helped us to make the barn look so lovely.
Thank you to the many local businesses who supported the event, including Korkers Sausages, Kerry’s Cakes, The Hatch Charity, Dewitt Residential Flooring, Philip Jarvis Estate Agent, Eden Transformer Oil, The Fig Tree Spa, The Wishful Thinker, The Square Fish Cafe, Lenham Film Club, No 3, Kent Loves…, Whizzbang Face Painting, The Sweetie Chockie Bickie Company, Pat & Glenda Neilson with their steam engine and The Red Lion. A particular thanks to The Lenham Focus for their very generous donation, helping us purchase new apple crushing equipment and to Claire & Arthur Houston of Toll Fruit Farm who donated a massive crate of apples for pressing. We’d also like to thank Andy and Alayne Burr from Sandway, who came to our rescue providing more apples when we ran out! We’re also very grateful to the wonderful troupe of volunteers who worked so hard to put on the day and to everyone who baked cakes for the cake stall or donated wine for Wine or Water.
We hope to hold the event again next year, so watch this space!
The Big Help Out – Monday 8th May 2023
We’d like to thank everyone who came along and joined us for The Big Help Out event, part of the Coronation weekend. About 70 wonderful volunteers joined us and it was particularly great to see people of all ages taking part. The rain held off and the team worked very hard picking litter, clearing paths, pulling up nettles, tidying up both Glebe Pond and Jubilee Garden, making a huge difference to our community green spaces. Children got heavily involved in building a splendid bug hotel, which was appropriately dubbed ‘Bugingham Palace’!
Everyone who attended was invited to take part in a free raffle for 2 adult annual Leeds Castle tickets donated by the Lenham Focus. The lucky winner was Theo Day, with a second prize going to Pavel Barkenov, congratulations to you both! There were much-needed refreshments available after all the hard work. Thanks also to Diane Turner and Lynn Fletcher for some of the photos below.
