THE dedicated team of volunteers who look after Kirkconnel’s public areas have been honoured for their efforts.

They won a Silver Gilt medal for the project, called Brighten Up Kirkconnel, in the small village category of the competition, run by Beautiful Scotland.

Judges gave them a points total of 159 from a possible 200 and praised their work for the ‘numerous, immaculately maintained displays’ throughout the village.

Sandra Maclennan and Alan Gray were the judges and they were both highly impressed by what they saw and explained why.

They said: “The volunteers in this small village have continued to sustain their creditable efforts to brighten up Kirkconnel.

“Each year they have gone from strength to strength, and this year is no exception with major regeneration of the Mining and War memorials.

“A real sense of pride in heritage is celebrated by the Mining memorial, the mine wheel sculpture, the memorial to poet Alexander Anderson, and catalogued documents and photographs which are readily accessible to those wishing to research local and family history.”

Other groups, in particular the Cubs, also came in for praise as did the efforts to secure funding from various sources including the Coalfields Regeneration Trust.

Chairman of Brighten Up Kirkconnel, Gary Hughes, said: “We obtained funding from Foundation Scotland to regenerate the War Memorial garden and entered this project for one of the Discretionary Awards, called The Jim Murdie Trophy for Sustainability.

“Residents can check our progress on the Keep Scotland beautiful website — each entry has a profile and gives all the relevant details.”

Mr Hughes is pictured on the left of our photo alongside, from left: judge Alan Gray, Richard Lamb, Fay Rafferty, judge Sandra Maclennan and Liz Harkness.