THOUSANDS of people witnessed the best in music and entertainment from the world of folk as the 45th running of the Chippenham Folk Festival was held.

The four-day event included more than 200 acts playing at venues across the town, including The Pitmen Poets, Isla St Clair and Bob Fox amongst other well-known stars.

Festival organiser, Bob Berry, said: “It’s been absolutely amazing, the festival has been really good.

“This weekend we’ve had 232 individual events in over 14 venues and there has been around 10,000 people enjoying the events each day.

“The team of 35 people, none of whom got paid, all do it for the same reason – to put on a good show.

“Working with the Chippenham BID was absolutely fantastic this year, talking about business improvement in the area – which is what we’ve been doing for 45 years.

“Community cohesion is top of our list. We do an economic impact study every year and last year we raised over £1.3million for the local economy by putting this on.

“If everyone who came to the festival put a pound in the box at the entrance it would secure the future of the festival, but we would never dream of enforcing an entry fee as what we do is all about working in the community and getting the community to work with us.”

The Folk Festival, which costs £165,000 every year to run and was supported for the first time by the Chippenham BID, started on Friday (May 27) and finished on Monday (May 31).

Kyrle Du Heaume, 65, from Hereford: “I’ve been coming to the festival for 13 years as it’s very varied. It’s brilliant for dance in particular with lots of good workshops.

“There are four brilliant parties up at the sports centre with great bands attracting lots of different ages, they’re the highlight for me.”

Busker Dan Pert, 24, from duo Skyline Rising said: “The festival brings people out of their towns to Chippenham – we came from Bath because we heard there was a festival going on and it would be a good place to busk.

“It’s good for local businesses and everyone seems to enjoy it. There’s been a good response to our music from people walking past so we’re happy.”