n November 2015 eight products, including Patrick Strainge's Bampton Royal sausages were nominated for the Q Guild Smithfield Awards. Only 200 butchers in England can hold a Q guild aware at any one time so it really is a feather in the cap of our local butchers shop. The Bampton Royal sausages were also a firm favourite with many members of the cast of Downton Abbey which was partly filmed in Bampton.
Originally called the Bampton Charity Shop, it had a name change and a legal status changed to enable it to donate monies to other charities in Bampton. Apparently a charity cannot give money to another charity and Trevor Milne-Day gave his time to deal with the legal matter of the change. In this article Fenella Gray talks about the history of the shop from its inception in 2004.
This article was written by Fenella Gray in the summer of 2012 where she documents the history of the Community Shop up to that point. In 2008 the Archive made a film about the Community Shop up to that point. For a while, the shop had to close because the owners of the premises felt the storage facility at the back was a fire hazard but happily, the shop re-opened not too long after next door but one in Rosemary Lane with much improved facilities.