Beasts of Bucklesham Calendar 2025 has been launched

When Bucklesham Community Council was drawing up ideas to raise money for the village's celebrations for the 80th anniversary of VE Day, the members decided to create a fun 'Beasts of Bucklesham Calendar 2025'.

Villagers were encouraged to submit photos of their own "beasts" for the calendar and 72 pictures were received in total, including dogs, cats, tortoises, Guinea pigs and even stick insects.

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Another one of the Beasts of Bucklesham (Image: Submitted) The total number of entries meant that each calendar page featured six animals and the calendar is dedicated to the brave "beasts" that served during the Second World War.

During the war, there were 200,000 homing pigeons carrying vital messages, 10,000 dogs that sniffed out land mines and served as watch dogs guarding supplies, while there were also 6,500 horses and donkeys transporting troops, equipment and supplies to areas trucks could not reach.

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Jackie Brunning, the community council's chair, said: "The idea came really because we wanted to raise money for the VE Day celebrations next year because it will be the 80th anniversary.

"We wanted to do something that would be a free event for villagers and we thought a calendar might be something that people might want to buy.

"The more people we got in it, we thought it might sell. We thought that if we got pictures of people, there might be too many, but we thought that if we do animals, everybody loves animals.

"We thought with animals serving in World War II, we thought we could do Bucklesham Beasts honouring them."

The calendar will be on sale at a Christmas Crafts sale in the village hall between 2pm and 4pm this weekend or copies can be bought by phoning Bucklesham Parish Council on 07854 712734.

Some of the guinea pigs that feature in the Beasts of Bucklesham calendar (Image: Submitted)