**Scarecrow festival 2020 cancelled** Unfortunately due to government guidelines we have taken the decision to cancel this year’s scarecrow festival.
Even though the guidelines may ease by September these uncertain times make it difficult to plan and assure things are in place to protect villagers and visitors.
We know the effect it has had with visitors visiting the reservoir and parking in our small village; it really will be impossible to assure guidelines are able to be followed.
Local villages around Thornton have cancelled, therefore if we continue it may bring more visitors because we would be one of the only scarecrow festivals happening this year.
Even though this would be lovely for businesses I’m sure you’ll agree an influx of visitors isn’t what we want / need at this time.
Our main priority is ALL of our villagers; we have a lot of older, vulnerable and shielded residents so need to make sure we keep them and ourselves safe and continue doing what we are doing.
Thank you to everyone who got in touch with me about entering this year, we hope you will enter again next year. Watch out 2021 Thornton Scarecrow festival is coming for you!
There is a reminder on the front page of the Herald that in the absence of the planned Thornton Open gardens this month there will be a Virtual Tour instead.
If you have photographs/videos (or can take some) of your garden send them to Lis Muller for editing into a video that can be shared on Facebook/Village Website/ YouTube etc. Email to thornton.opengardens@outlook.com
A lottery grant of nearly £3,000,000 has been awarded to Charnwood Forest Regional Park to enhance and protect Charnwood Forest.
The park committee has organised a webinar to share information about the internationally important geology.
Charnwood has some of the most significant geology in Britain and indeed the world; from incredible fossils of some of the first animals, to amazing ancient volcanoes that continue to shape the landscape today.
The region’s exceptional geological heritage prompts a question: what more should be done to celebrate, promote, and protect this unique resource?
It is the underlying geology that has left us the wonderful locations that make up the Regional Park. The volcanic hard rock is evident in many outcrops and has made the land unworkable for agriculture and as such largely undisturbed for centuries. Later quarrying to use the same rock has also left big holes and rock faces and a wide range of habitats in a very small area, a Lake District in miniature.
All are invited to a public event to bring those involved, other members of the community and others with an interest in geology together to learn more about Charnwood’s remarkable geoheritage.
The online event, open to all, will be hosted by Dr Jack Matthews of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History who assisted in pulling together the final presentation .
The event will begin with a talk outlining the wonderful geological heritage within the region, and then provide more information about how the community could work together over the coming years to protect and interpret it.
It will consider the opportunities presented by the forthcoming now funded Landscape Partnership Scheme to enhance geological conservation and the potential for future protective designation.
There will be an opportunity to ask any questions you may have, register your interest, and also engage with others involved with the Charnwood Forest Regional Park, who have been working together to celebrate the region’s geological history.
To join this free online event 10.00am June 10th , please click the link below to register:
This is a public event so please do forward this invitation on to anyone that you think may be interested, including to your own mailing lists and social networks. We would be delighted for you to join us.
The June edition includes village and church news, prayers and thoughts for this difficult time, suggested bible readings, puzzles and cartoons. If you haven’t seen it before, why not take a look? Please go to http://www.j22churches.org.uk to download yours!Thanks to Mary and the team for producing this for our church and benefice.
The Bishop of Leicester is pleased to announce the appointment of
The Revd Andrew Smith, Curate at The Church of Christ the King, Kettering, in the Diocese of Peterborough, as Rector of the Benefice of Markfield, Thornton, Bagworth and Stanton under Bardon and Copt Oak.
The date of Andrew’s licensing will be announced in due course.
In the absence of  church services at St Peter’s, our minister Rev Pauline Ashby is going to write a few words, a homily,  each week for us. The first of these, for Sunday 24th May, is now available on the church website www.j22churches.org.uk/
Thornton 