The volunteers from Cheltenham’s Holst Birthplace Museum have been rewarded for their dedication after winning the Queens’s Award for Voluntary Service.

Velia Stevens and Mike Jenkinson represented the team of volunteers at a garden party held in the gardens of Buckingham Palace last month. The award is the highest accolade given to local volunteer groups across the UK – to recognise outstanding work done in their own communities. It was created in 2002 to celebrate the anniversary of The Queen’s coronation. “We had the most wonderful time, it was so very exciting to travel down to London and visit the palace”, said Velia Stevens, who has been volunteering at the museum for eleven years. She added: “I’ve never won anything, so I was tremendously excited to represent the museum at such a wonderful occasion. I love helping out at the museum, it’s great to welcome all the visitors who come to see the home Gustav Holst was born and grew up in.”

Laura Kinnear, curator at the Holst Birthplace Museum, was over the moon to hear her team of volunteers had been rewarded for their hard work. She said: “Velia and Mike have been volunteering here at the museum for a combined twenty years which is quite an achievement. They’re part of a great team of volunteers we have whose work is so crucial to the success of the museum. They’re all so friendly and a joy to work with, it was so exciting to find out they had won the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service.”

Located just a 5-minute walk from Cheltenham High Street, the museum has been carefully restored and refurbished as it would have been during Holst’s childhood in the 1870s. Holst, composer of the legendary ‘Planets Suite’, was born in the house on Clarence Road on 21st September 1874. One of the star attractions in the museum is the piano on which Holst composed his famous ‘Planets Suite’. Laura continued: “It’s a great thrill to be able to work at a building with such a wonderful history. To come to work and see the very piano that Holst used to compose his most famous piece of work is an enormous honour.”