Tidy Towns; Newsletter Autumn / Winter 2019

Welcome to the Summer Edition of our Tidy Towns Newsletter.

Weclome to our latest newsletter where we hope to showcase all the hard work that our community has been doing the last few months.

We had a busy summer and we would like to thank all who helped us in the run up to the competition judging.

A lot was achieved over the summer and all the hard work paid off. We received our adjudication report in October and it was a very positive. We received 13 extra points this brought us up to 240 points in total. We improved by 5.72% - not bad for our first year. We were only 1 point short for best improved village in Westmeath. The adjudicator acknowledged all that we achieved in such a short time. Our community garden was highly praised.

This is our first year with it and we hope that more people will avail of this wonderful resource in 2020.
We held our first AGM in Isaac’s well pub on the 17th October.

A committed few turned out and we set a date for another meeting. This was held on the 24th November and we had a new committee elected (Secretary) John Wilson: Chairperson (Grainne Finucane) Catherine Wilson (Treasurer)
The coming year will be a challenging one and we are sure that with your continued support we will achieve all our new goals that we set ourselves.

Environment
In March of this year we launched the Conscious Cup Campaign, choose to reuse to tackle the problem of disposable cups, this was a great success and we would like to thank Vikram Manager of our local Day to Day Supermarket for his great support with this project. Minster for the Environment Richard Bruton announced that there will be new levies on plastic bags, disposable cups and waste disposal.

The rate for disposable cups could range from 10c to 25c. We will highlight this again in early 2020 to remind people of the issues that plastic bottles and non recyclable cups can cause to our environment. Now is the time to try and encourage our young generation to be more conscious of their environment so parents lead by example try and purchase these cups and show your children that you care about the environmental issues that face us today.

We have added 4 new picnic benches to our village 3 on the main street and one wheelchair accessible table beside the rose beds on the Mullingar road. We would like to thank the Supervalu Kells for sponsoring the Wheelchair Accessible bench and Clonmellon Men’s Shed for their help with these projects.

Our biggest project over the last few months has been the painting of several properties in the village of which we are very proud. Most of these were derelict and in need of a bit of care and attention.

In October the Clonmellon Arms (above) was painted and what a difference this has made. Thanks to Anthony Kelly for his support in organising this.

Grants

Grants are very important part of tidytowns fundraising.
We recently applied for a grant to mark out the long unused tarred area beside the playground. We were approved for over €1,000 towards this work. We have to make sure this amount is in our account to allow us carry out the work before the grant is paid over to us post completion of the work.
The committee I would like to thank all who support us over the year with fundraising and grants.

Local Assets

We have a great local asset here in (Clonmellon) and this is Clonmellon Community Radio Station which is an internet only radio station. This is run by Steven McKenna. In September Steven invited us to do a pod cast for the station. We were made very welcome and I have to say Steven was well up to
date as to what we were trying to achieve in tidy towns. So if you would like to get your message out to the local community why not use this local asset Clonmellon Community Radio you can contact Steven at clonmelloncommunityradio.com.

Fundraising

We held our annual fundraiser Afternoon Tea in Isaac’s Well and we had a great day. We try to improve on how we do our fundraisers and this year we had some music from Sturgen Brae and they gave a great performance. Without the help and support of local business we could not have these fundraisers so again a big thank you all.

Heritage

The concluding remarks from the adjudicator was very encouraging and supportive and gives us a lot of confidence going forward , he remarked that Clonmellon is a beautiful village which deserves to have it’s heritage highlighted further. With this in mind we had these plaques made up ( 8 ) as you can see they give us a good sense of our heritage and we will have them all put up over the next couple of months. We are also looking at having this new sign made for the approach road from kells (this is work in progress) and the sign outside the market square needs to be replace and updated.

All of this work will help give a good historical view of our village not only to local residents but also to the many visitors and friends who visit here.

Christmas In Clonmellon

The festive season got off to a good star this year in Clonmellon. We had two concerts held in St John’s Church. The first of these was held on the 1st December (Christmas Carols) with Matthew Gilsenan and guest Deirdre Shannon. Then we had the Christmas Fair which was a great success.

We then had our fundraiser gospel night on the 15th December with the Virginia Gospel Choir. This was a great night and we thank all the people who came on the night to support us.

A big thank you to the Clonmellon Community Hall for all there help this year as they provided us with the seating for this year’s concert.

As part of our winter fundraising we had our calendar Scenes of Killua Castle 2020 for sale. As always we would like to thank all who supported us but special thanks goes to Ann Leonards for her help and support with the sale of our calendars from her shop.

Westmeath County Council

All through the year we work in partnership with various departments within Westmeath County Council to help with the upkeep of our village, we would like to pay a special thank you to the street cleaning department for their help in keeping our streets extra clean this Christmas.

Community garden

Our community garden has come a long way as you can see from the above pictures. We now have a polytunnel . This will be a great asset to our garden and we can now grow flowers for our hanging baskets which will help to reduce our cost over the coming year and years to come.We still have empty plots so if you are interested or know anyone who would like one please contact us .

There is a lot more work to be done and we are up for the challenge but we could always do with a bit of help so if you have one hour or two to spare and would like to get involved please do so you can contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or see our facebook page.

As always we welcome any help, input and ideas.
Please contact us on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Best wishes,
On behalf of the committee
John Wilson
Secretary