Welcome to the East Carleton Website

This website was initially established many years ago to promote the East Carleton open gardens event; it has now grown to complement the village’s monthly newsletter.

St Mary’s church is the hub of the village, where coffee mornings and other events are held. The first few open gardens funded the building of a toilet at the church. Since then, we have continued to raise money to support our community and other charities close to our collective hearts.

Our regular fundraising events are our monthly coffee/soup mornings, and we use this website to advertise them. The village votes on a funding project for that year at a coffee morning.

Our nominated 2026 Charity is [decision to be made at the end of 2026]

Our nominated 2025 Charities were The Claire School, NARS (Norfolk Accident Rescue Service) and PACT Animal Sanctuary.

In 2024, the village decided to fundraise for our community and installed a Memory Bench to remember those who had recently died but were not forgotten.

Our nominated 2023 Charity was Cancer Research UK‍ ‍

Money raised in 2022 went to Little Lifts, based in Bawburgh; their mission is to support women undergoing breast cancer treatment by providing ‘little lift’ boxes. Each box contains treats specially chosen to support their physical and emotional well-being.

2020/2021 presented fundraising challenges due to COVID-19 restrictions, but we still managed to raise funds for the village defibrillator. We successfully applied for grants, received generous donations, ran a cake-baking and delivery service, and socially distanced carol-singing. As of June 2021, the Defibrillator was operational and is located at the start of the drive to St Mary’s Church.

The Open Garden event is not our only fundraiser for village projects and charities. We regularly hold soup lunches, coffee mornings and other one-off events such as quizzes, curry and chilli nights, bonfire nights, Christmas concerts, midsummer choral events, garage sales, and a successful Car Show in 2021.

Take a look at the 2012 Open Garden event video below.