BEST KEPT VILLAGE COMPETITION – 2023 WINNERS ANNOUNCED

The best kept villages in Wiltshire for 2023 have been decided as the results of the CPRE Wiltshire Best Kept Village Competition are announced.

Bratton, Urchfont and Tockenham came top in their respective categories and are this year’s winners.

Rushall, 9 miles south-east of Devizes, has won the Laurence Kitching Award – also called the Winner of Winners’ competition – out of the six winning villages from the last two years in which the competition was held.

This year’s CPRE Wiltshire Best Kept Village Competition has been sponsored for the second time by CCm Technologies of Swindon.

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. Thirty villages throughout the county were tested against the competition criteria which include tidiness, cleanliness, presentation, conservation and village community spirit. As ever 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.  Each village is judged within the categories of ‘Small’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Large’ and in the first round they are only judged within their own district: West Wiltshire, North Wiltshire, South Wiltshire and Kennet (East Wiltshire).

In July the winning villages in each district were then judged against each other in the County Round, using fresh judging teams. The final results are:

Large Village                    Medium Village                 Small Village

1^st  Bratton        95 pts   1^st  Urchfont      90 pts   1^st Tockenham    77 pts

2^nd Bromham     81 pts   2^nd Sutton Veny 84 pts   2^nd = Burcombe   76 pts

3^rd  Alderbury     80 pts  3^rd Dinton          82 pts  2^nd= Tytherington 76 pts

4^th  Hullavington 78 pts   4^th Biddestone  81 pts    (No entry from Kennet)

Note that different teams of judges were used in each of the three categories, so the points scored should not be contrasted between categories.

Laurence Kitching Award – Sponsored by Princeton Homes

The winning six villages from 2021 and 2022 were, as dictated by our rules, not allowed to compete in the main competition.  Instead they were invited to enter the Laurence Kitching Award, also sponsored by CCm Technologies and often called the ‘Winner of Winners’ competition.  The results were:

1^st  Rushall   2^nd  Tilshead   3^rd  Whiteparish   4^th Ramsbury

(Two villages chose not to enter)

Newcomers Award

This award encourages villages which have not entered the Best Kept Village Competition for the previous five years to give it a go. It comes with a £150 cash prize and a certificate.  CPRE Wiltshire hopes it will encourage even more villages to enter in 2024. This year two such villages qualified to enter.

The results were:

1^st        Hannington   2^nd       Tockenham

Merit Prize for Consistent Effort

A prize is awarded to the village that has been most consistently successful in the past six years but has not won the Laurence Kitching Award this year, nor the Merit Prize in 2021 or 2022.  In 2023 this has been won by Urchfont, who have regularly been 1st or 2nd in the Kennet Small Village competition in recent years.