Spotlight on Guilsfield is the village magazine. The first edition was distributed to the village in June 1966. Since then it has been published every quarter up to the present time. The magazine celebrated it's 50th Anniversary in 2016 with it's 200th edition. At the same time the long time producers, The Beaumond family, decided to retire
The magazine is distributed free to every household in the village and beyond. At present there are some 800 copies produced every quarter. The magazine relies on donations as there is no advertising. It consists of some 16 foolscap pages of news and events relevant to the village.
The following extract is from Issue no 1 which explains the concept.
Quarterly – to give us in Guilsfield:-
For a year, we hope to deliver a copy FREE to every house in the PARISH. In this day and age even this for FREE means all the WORK :- TYPING, STENCIL CUTTING, DUPLICATING, STAPLING, COLLECTING NEWS, DISTRIBUTING and EDITING must be done by volunteers. WE WANT MORE HELP. If you think this is a good idea, please tell any member of the Committee (their names can be found elsewhere ) WHAT YOU will do to help
We think this is a challenge to make ourselves a closely knit community. If we get your support we hope this will become a permanent feature in our lives in Guilsfield. A small donation to help with the cost of paper and ink to any Committee member would be gratefully received – BUT ACTIVE HELP is more important.
In the early days all this work was done by volunteers at home. Nowadays in this computer age is is processed on a word processor and submitted to the printers each quarter.
I, myself, archived all the old paper copies which are now on disc in fully searchable PDF format. It was a very interesting task to read about the earlier times of the village which has been our home for the last 14 years. A copy of the disc has been lodged with Powys County Council Archives for future generations.
