Musicians in the prize-winning Aldbourne Band are going back to school in the hope of persuading pupils to join its embryonic junior section.

The aim is to provide a succession of skilled young players to feed into its highly successful competition section and keep awards coming in.

The band, which is more than 140 years old, won the senior trophy at the national Spring festival in Blackpool this year.

In the past it has won the West of England championship and has played at the Royal Albert Hall.

Last Wednesday the first of the school concerts was performed at St Michael’s in Aldbourne where band chairman James Shepherd was a pupil.

Mr Shepherd, who farms at Poulton near Marlborough, was one of the ten players who went along to entertain the the children and encourage them to get involved.

He said: “We talked to the children about the various instruments and how they make sounds and the children were very interested.

“The idea of the band doing this is to get more young people to join our junior section which we have just launched.”

The band is planning to visit other primary schools to encourage pupils to go along to training nights.

Practice sessions will be from September 6 at 7pm on Tuesdays in the Memorial Hall in Aldbourne.

Mr Shepherd said it was hoped the new junior band would be proficient enough to play by the end of the year. “We are aiming to have the junior band play at our Christmas concert in St Michael’s Church,” he said.