VILLAGERS in Sampford Courtenay have received a Lottery grant to help commemorate the 60th anniversary of the ending of the second world war. The grant of almost £2,000 from the Big Lottery Fund?s Home Front Recall programme to the Sampford Courtenay Village Hall management committee will allow several events to be put on to recall the experiences of people living and working in the UK from 1939 to 1945. The grant, totalling £1,995, was announced by the committee last week. A film evening will be held at the village hall on Friday, March 11, when film reels from the Imperial War Museum will be shown, featuring footage of evacuees, food rationing, the ?Dig for Victory? campaign and observing the blackout. On Saturday, June 11, the village will recreate a day-long celebration of the ending of the war, including an exhibition of wartime memorabilia, military and civilian vehicles in the village square, children?s sports and old-fashioned sideshows on the village green. In the evening, there will be a celebratory supper for parishioners at which food, prepared to wartime recipes, will be served followed by a female vocalist singing popular songs of the period and ending with a dance band playing 1930s and 1940s tunes. Committee chairman Anthony Morris said: ?This grant has given us the opportunity to put on what we hope will be memorable occasions that go some way to re-creating the wartime community spirit.? Sampford Courtenay Village Hall committee?s work to find funding for a comprehensive refurbishment and extension of the 120-year-old hall is ongoing. The project was one of a number identified in the recently published Okehampton Area MCTi Community Action Plan. A meeting has been arranged to help identify possible funding streams which the project could access.
