Herefordshire Marmalade Festival
Herefordshire Marmalade Festival takes place in Bromyard in late February or early March and features a marmalade competition, marmalade related food and other musical and fun events in a variety of local venues. Entries come from across the UK and the festival culminates in an awards lunch which includes an auction of the jars entered in the competition. All proceeds go to the festival’s nominated charity, St Michael’s Hospice.
About Bromyard
Bromyard is a town in Herefordshire, England with a population in 2019 of approximately 4,700. It lies near to the county border with Worcestershire on the A44 between Leominster and Worcester. Bromyard has a number of traditional half-timbered buildings, including some of the pubs, and the parish church dates back to Norman times. The town is twinned with Athis-de-l’Orne, Normandy.
The Bromyard & District Local History Society was founded in 1966 and is extremely active, with a centre open three days a week which contains a large archive and library and an exhibition room. The Conquest Theatre offers a programme of plays, variety, musicals, operettas, ballet, pantomime and concerts, in a purpose-built centre constructed in 1991. At Christmas time, volunteers (also known as the Bromyard Light Brigade) organize an extensive display of Christmas lights which are put up at October and switched on the last Saturday of November, which runs for the five weeks up to Christmas until after the New Year. The group established links with Blackpool Illuminations over 2010, and Blackpool’s director Richard Ryan performed the switching-on ceremony in the same year and the volunteers were awarded The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Services also in the same year.
Bromyard is the home of Nozstock Festival of Performing Arts which attracts nearly 3,000 visitors at the end of July every year. This three-day event showcases 30 bands from around the country across three stages, alongside two dance arenas, a cinema, a theatre and comedy stage, circus, and a vintage tractor arena. The Bromyard Gala, an annual weekend festival of country sports, vintage vehicles and displays of various kinds, is held in the vicinity in July. Bromyard hosts a three-day folk festival each year in September, which particularly concentrates on English traditional music. It is one of the largest events of its kind in the country. Bromyard.info is the community website for Bromyard and District. Run as a Community Interest Company by volunteers, it is an ‘online daily news site’, has a full events calendar, features places of interest, accommodation, pubs, restaurants and shopping directory, together with a full local directory.
Bromyard is served by a monthly community magazine called Off the Record. It is published on the first Friday of each month and contains 60 pages of news from community groups .
Source:
