Gossip article on Audlem

Each month, the AudlemOnline team sends a 500-word article about the village to the publishers of the Whitchurch Gossip and Market Drayton Gossip magazines.

These excellent publications are widely (and freely) distributed in North Shropshire and many in Audlem see a copy, particularly of the Whitchurch magazine. Many of our readers, however, are outside their distribution area.

We thought you might like to read what we said about the village this month:

Audlem hits an amazing target

At the end of last year, Audlem hit the national and international headlines with news of its 'Amazing Grace' DVD, featuring 1,100 local people. The aim was to raise money for the 'Mend our Mum' campaign, helping to raise £100,000 to treat a local mother's very serious illness.

Amazingly, the campaign has now passed the £100,000 mark, a remarkable achievement for the small village.

This target was set by two very loving daughters, Teri and Hannah Cliffe, as they decided to help their Mum, Berni, who had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer of the gall bladder.

NHS treatment for her cancer at this late stage was not available for her so the girls set in motion a drive for the needed funds.

This started last summer and then in October 2014, when the total raised by a series of events stood at around £35,000, the village exploded into action.

The Audlem Music Festival team undertook the "Amazing Grace" story of filming and recording virtually all the Audlem groups and residents in a drive to reach the £100,000 mark.

It was truly amazing that so many took part in what was a marathon of many hours work by the talented Festival team, in order to launch the Mend our Mum to the bigger world.

The DVD came out in December. As many will have seen. many media outlets covered the Mend Our Mum story – across the globe too. The BBC and ITV played a major role in this excitement and generated many more donations from across Britain, Europe and Canada where the story was even broadcast on Canadian National TV news.

A matched funding of a climb of Snowdonia by the retail company GAP was confirmed last month and that, plus more DVD sales through Williams Newsagents and Braids Salon in Audlem, took the fund over the magic number.

There has been other successful charitable activity too with the Audlem Charity Shop donating its takings from last year. This is a very popular shop run entirely by volunteers. Each year, donations are made to local causes and another successful year enabled £29,000 to be donated recently with the largest being £16,000 for St. Luke's Hospice.

Cheques were also presented to the Donna Louise Children's Hospice, the Wingate Centre, Audlem District Community Action and Audlem First Responders.

The well-known boat service, Audlem Lass, also started its fifth season on Good Friday, with regular trips at weekends and Bank Holidays from the bottom of the Audlem locks to Overwater marina. Profits go to the RNLI, the lifeboat charity, and over £16,000 has been raised in the four years since the service began.

Audlem Lass is just one good reason to visit Audlem as Spring gets underway.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.