A SPORTS club near Chard is celebrating 50 years this month with a week long festival.

Thorncombe Sports and Social Club will host the anniversary celebrations from August 23 until 30, with a variety of different events and activities.

These include:

  • Monday - Cocktails and poker tournament
  • Tuesday - Movie night
  • Wednesday - Darts, pool, skittles and table skittles and beer and cider festival
  • Thursday - Quiz night with a 1970s theme
  • Friday - Live music from In2theBlue
  • Saturday - Family fun day and 70s disco: this includes a bouncy castle, car boot sale, food carts, a beer and cider fest and much more.
  • Sunday - Car and bike rally, and vintage food van
  • Monday (August 30) - Big breakfast

Football was first played in Thorncombe around the second world war by the local team, The Thorncombe Rangers.

And the cricket club started in the middle of the 1950s.

Around the early 1970s, Cricket Club secretary and village school headmaster, Alan Jordon, suggest both clubs pool their resources and form a sports club.

Commander W.J Eyre of Sadborow Estate offered to lease five and one third of an acre of land in Horseshoe Lane for the sports field for just £1 a year.

By 1971, a clubhouse and changing rooms were built.

Eventually more sports teams joined and Dorset County Council encouraged a move towards a Multi Games Area.

Eventually, after various funding issues, this became a reality and by 1999, the new improved facilities were opened by MP Oliver Letwin.

And today, Thorncombe Sports and Social Club has on average more than 350 members rejoin each year.

It has two football teams, a cricket team, ten league skittle teams, table skittles and darts teams.

To find out more about the club or the events taking place next week, visit thorncombeclub.co.uk.