News

The two lucky winners of the quarterly Littlehempston lottery draw were Val Hoare’s son, David, who scooped the £98 first prize and her neighbour, Gill, who won the second prize of £24. And a very welcome £122 was donated to the Community Space. Thanks to Annie Thomas, who drew out the winning balls last night at the Tally Ho, and to everyone who bought a ticket. There’s one more draw this year – get in touch if you’d like to take part.

Everyone in Littlehempston should have received a card in the post recently explaining that Openreach are hoping to deliver fibre broadband to Littlehempston with the aid of the government’s rural gigabit voucher scheme https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk/. They want to install Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) which would give you a minimum speed of 30 Mbps (roughly 10 times faster than we currently get). Openreach will receive at least £1,500 from the government towards the cost of the fibre installation for each household that signs up to the scheme (and £3,500 for each business). Here’s a link to an online version of the Openreach card in case you didn’t receive yours.

Fibre broadband would allow us to access online services, make video calls, work from home, stream HD TV and game online – all at the same time. With no frustrating buffering, no connection dropouts, no waiting your turn. Apparently there’s published research showing that faster broadband can increase the value of your house by up to 2%, and the second most asked question when viewing a house to buy or rent is “What is the broadband speed?”.

To achieve that speed, Openreach need to install a fibre optic cable to each household and business in Littlehempston – they can’t just do one or two, here and there, they need to do them all. The money to pay for the installation will come from the government – provided enough of us commit to using fast fibre broadband for at least a year after the installation is completed. So Openreach have set up the Littlehempston Ultrafast Community Project.

Openreach install and maintain the phone and broadband networks – they don’t supply phone and broadband services. There’s a wide range of broadband suppliers who can provide full fibre broadband, which probably includes your current landline telephone and broadband supplier (so you probably won’t need to change!). Here’s a list of broadband providers that households can use: https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/fttp-providers. You’ll probably need to pay a little bit extra for the much faster full fibre service, but if our research into rates with BT is typical, it’ll only cost a few pounds a month extra.

So if you’d like to help bring fast fibre broadband to Littlehempston, and you live in one of these postcodes:
TQ9 6LP, 6LR, 6LS, 6LT, 6LU, 6LW, 6LX, 6LY, 6LZ, 6NA, 6NB, 6NF, 6NG
please sign up to this scheme here: https://www.openreach.com/connectmycommunity.

If you’re not very happy filling in online forms, here are step by step instructions:

1. Click on this link: https://www.openreach.com/connectmycommunity which should open in a new tab or window.
2. Click on Find out how, or just scroll down a bit, then answer Yes to the question Is it less than 100Mbps?
3. You should then be asked for your post code. Type it into the box, click in the box to say you’re not a robot, then click on the little magnifying glass search symbol.
4. If you’ve filled in a Littlehempston postcode you should then be told you’re eligible to join the scheme, shown how we’re doing on our way to the target, and how many homes and businesses have already signed up. Click on Pledge for Littlehempston Ultrafast Community Project.
5. You should then see the application form. Fill in your details, and tick the boxes to accept the pledge terms and privacy policy. Finally click on Submit Application.

Get in touch with us through the website’s contact form if you’ve got any questions.

Local heroine Val Hoare completed her epic bike ride this month, riding over 200 miles in five petal-shaped routes to represent the forget-me-not emblem of the Alzheimer’s Society for which she has raised more than £1100 to date. Over 5 days she rode out from home on Ackrells Hill to Ermington (pictured here), Kingswear, Slapton, Chudleigh and almost to Princetown on Day 5. This was achieved with a little help from her friends who sometimes accompanied her or met her for lunch. As a grand finale on Saturday 12th, Val did a further 20 mile “trundle” round the local churches for the annual fundraising Ride or Stride, raising £400 for the Devon Historic Churches Trust, who are part funding the repair to the east window of our church.

Val says “Thank you to everyone who contributed to the success and enjoyment of my week on wheels. It has been amazing”.

And it’s not too late to show your appreciation of Val’s feat by donating to either charity. Go online to:
justgiving.com/fundraising/valhoare-alzheimerssociety
and/or:
justgiving.com/fundraising/valhoare-dhct

And of course, you can give a cash donation to Val.

Our community meadow has recently been graced with a cast of 13 lovingly-created scarecrows. This was Littlehempston’s first scarecrow competition and proved a great success. We had traditional scarecrows, willow sculptures, film characters, nursery rhyme characters and a sensational lock-down character who was working from home. It was wonderful to see the community get behind this little piece of escapism and even more wonderful to have fifty-five people take part in the public voting- including on-line votes from village supporters in France, America and New Zealand!

We rounded the voting week off with a cake and produce stall, which gave folk a last-minute chance to cast their votes and also the chance to have a chat with new and old friends alike.

Thank you to everyone who took part in any way, and an especial thank you to Jenny Galton-Fenzi whose inspired idea started the whole thing off.

In case you are wondering- first prize went to Scarecrow 15, ‘Working from Home’ entered by the Penfold family, and the second prize to the Keelings’ Scarecrow 12, the Unicorn. Congratulations to the creators of both. Highly commended entries included Little Bo Peep from young Ollie Smith, pictured here.

We hope this will be repeated in the future- so get your thinking caps on and your designs drawn for next year.

Val Hoare.

The roadside Produce and Cake stall set up by the triangle bridge on Saturday 29th August received a lot of happy customers and raised over £100 towards community activities. It proved a good location, as motorists slowed for the bridge, then pulled over, attracted by the fine array of home grown produce, cakes and chutnies. Passing walkers were unable to resist the cakes and many wandered off into the meadow to view the scarecrows, munching as they went. And it also developed into a bit of a hub to have a chat and a welcome opportunity for a catch-up.

Many thanks to all who donated to the stall and to Dave Smith from Deapp Farm, who brought over two brimming veg boxes. Deapp cabbage pictured here, complete with butterfly.