WORRIED villagers who feared their fete had been sabotaged celebrated this weekend as the event turned into a huge success.

The group of fundraisers who organised Hinton-on-the-Green village fete were left heartbroken last week when eight handmade advertising signs went missing days before the event.

But they refused to be beaten and thanks to their fighting spirit and an article promoting the event in the Journal they raised £1,620 for their village church.

Clare Davies, who contacted the Journal last week after the fete signs went missing, said the removal of the adverts may have even helped in the end.

"To the people who took the signs I would say, if your reasons for removing our signs was to sabotage our event, it didn't work," she said. "You may even have done us a favour as I am sure the article in the Journal boosted our turnout and contributed to our huge success."

The original target for the fundraiser, which donates its proceeds to St Peter's Church, was more than £1,000, but this was smashed by the total raised thanks to local support.

Mrs Davies said: "The bottle tombola was a huge success and alone raised over £300. This was all donated from villagers and also Mr and Mrs Frost who were married in the Church on Friday, July 4.

"Instead of asking for wedding presents they asked for their guests to donate a bottle to the bottle tombola, we collected over 60 bottles from them.

"The fete was a great success and we were so overwhelmed with the turnout. I am sure the article and weather helped immensely.

"The feedback was great from visitors, saying how much fun they had and how relaxed and enjoyable it was. One negative comment was that the slices of cake we were selling on our refreshments stall were too big, I can live with that.

"Now people have enjoyed this years fete I can only hope they will return to all our future fetes."