OOPS ... Marquee mayhem marked the start of Honley Feast

carried by Storm Bronagh.

They then used a winch to remove the canvas remains from around the tree.

This is the first year Jonathan Green has organised Honley Feast and he admitted the loss of the £10,000 main festival tent was not an ideal beginning.

“It started off a bit calamitous,” he said.

“I got a phone call at 3am on the Friday to say the marquee had blown away and the entire thing had wrapped itself around a tree in somebody’s garden.

“It was a complete write-off. We managed to get a smaller one in but it meant we didn’t have room for some of the events, like the cooking demonstration.”

Aside from the marquee mayhem, the festival at Honley Cricket Club on Saturday was a success. It included a dog agility competition and a battle of the bands contest.

A Holme Valley Sharing Memories tent was filled with murals and artwork that looked back at the Hope Bank Pleasure Ground – a long lost Honley fairground which once attracted tens of thousands of visitors.

A play ‘Sticklebacks and Swingboats’ was staged based on real life stories of the pleasure ground collected A 100ft marquee for Honley Feast was blown over a 6ft wall and wrapped around a tree in a neighbouring back garden by Holme Valley Sharing Memories, a project which works with older people in the valley.

Competitors in a Wineathon took on a 10km run, during which they stopped off at various points for a glass of wine.

Jonathan added: “The Wineathon was interesting. They came back at around noon and some of them carried on drinking in the beer tents until around 7pm. It was really nice.

“The weather intervened a bit but everyone was still smiling.

“The thing I was most pleased about was that at the end of the day there was not a spot of litter anywhere.”