What makes Hampton Lucy the perfect village? Its people!
BY ROBERT COLLINS
robert.collins@leamingtoncourier.co.uk
COMMUNITY spirit is the key to a thriving village life - ask anyone in Hampton Lucy.
They should know. The modest settlement of about 450 people has won the Warwickshire Village of the Year Competition and is preparing to enter the regional heat of the contest.
It also won the award for best small village in the county and district in the best kept village competition, but its residents claim the secret is not wood- framed cottages or its soaring spire, but people.
Diana Robinson is a member of the village hall committee and also a volunteer with the village enhancement group, a group of volunteers who pick up litter, plant flowers and hedges and look after public areas.
She said: "I am just one of many people who work together. It is not individuals, it is the general support and co-operation."
 Mrs Robinson believes one project which sets Hampton Lucy apart from other villages is the Charles Maries Trail, which celebrates the life of a Victorian botanist who was born in the village and went on to bring back to England many of the Chinese and Japanese plants familiar to gardeners today.
The enhancement group planted almost 20 specimens the 'plant hunter' introduced around the village, and has published a leaflet leading visitors around the plants together with his schoolhouse and his ancestors' graves.
The trail was the idea of professional botanist Ken Cockshull, who moved to the village 12 years ago. Although he did much of the "academic spadework" he said the way villagers volunteered to care for the plants is a good example of why the village is such a pleasant place to live.
Below, a village scene including the cathedral like church of St Peter's built in the 1820s.
Another reason is the surroundings. Mr Cockshull cited St Peter's, the almost cathedral-sized church built by the Rev John Lucy in the 1820s, which is included in Times columnist Simon Jenkins' book England's Best 1,000 Churches, as one of its assets.
Mr Cockshull said: "It is a very attractive village in many ways - not chocolate box attractive but in that it is quite small and has the river as its natural boundary."
Below, a pretty corner of the village.
The judges found that what goes on within those boundaries is also remarkable.
The village holds a jazz festival every summer, paid for the repair of its own skateboard ramp and has its own email network and website.
In another project, villagers took on an area of disused allotments and planted a spinney, in which residents were encouraged to 'adopt' trees and look after them.
Parish council chairman Michael Woodman said: "There is great community spirit - so many people get involved in things.
"It is the spirit of the people that the judges are rewarding in this competition. I always sum it up in the words of the John F Kennedy speech - ask not what Hampton Lucy can do for you, but what you can do for Hampton Lucy."
ALL PHOTOS: MORRIS TR0UGHT0N
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