AN iconic beer festival has been saved after its organiser, the National Trust, said it could no longer run it due to a limited number of staff and volunteers.

Coggeshall Grange Barn Beer Festival will now celebrate its ninth anniversary this August into September at a different venue.

New organiser Russ Barnes, founder of Red Fox Brewery, has been involved with the event every year and has supplied the beer.

He said: “I notice a few of the locals are up in arms about it because they look forward to it every year. The festival will continue whether the National Trust back it or not.

“I completely staffed it myself last year after they gave me three weeks’ notice. The Barn was given to the National Trust with the proviso that it was used for Coggeshall events.

“We are going to make it bigger and better with some bands, which we couldn’t do with the National Trust. It’s a really nice site.”

The festival will from August 31 on a farmer’s field next to the Barn off Abbey Lane. It will kick off with a quiz night, followed by two live bands each on Friday and Saturday with the possibility of a hog roast.

Simon Cranmer, property operations manager of Grange Barn said: “The Coggeshall Beer Festival has, historically, been a National Trust event. which has been just one event in our overall programme.

“The beer festival was always an ambitious event for the small team of staff and volunteers to organise and run and in recent years, it has become increasingly difficult to resource this large event with our limited numbers of staff and volunteers.

“Every year we review our programming and as part of that review, we have decided not to go ahead with the beer festival this year as we simply don’t have the capacity to organise and run a successful event.”

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