CREDITON Benefice Parish Magazine has won a Gold Award in a national competition.

It has won the award for best black and white church magazine in a competition run by the Association for Church Editors (ACE).

Crediton Benefice Parish Magazine Editor Rose Grisman was due to be presented with the John King Award at a ceremony in Westminster Hall, London but this was cancelled due to a rail strike.

She has now received the Award and Certificate by post.

ACE was founded to promote a national church magazine competition and to continue to support the editors of those magazines. The John King Award, for the editor of the best magazine, is a silver baptismal shell, donated by Rachel King in memory of her husband, Rev Canon John King, who was a Canon of St Albans Abbey.

The Kings were friends of ACE's founder Michael Jameson.

Crediton Benefice Parish Magazine is a 32-page (A4 size) mix of reports on church and other events (religious, musical and social) in Crediton and the other churches in the benefice.

There are also articles of historic and general interest.

The magazine is entirely written by members of the congregations of the benefice (Rose is very grateful to all the contributors) and is printed locally.

It is a monthly publication, usually available on the last Saturday of the month and has an average circulation of about 300 copies but it is often "passed on", so its readership is greater than this number.

The current price is £1 per month, and an annual subscription is £10.

The magazine can be delivered to your door if you live in Crediton (telephone 01363 772865 to enquire about delivery), collected from Holy Cross and is available from A E Lee (Outfitters) on the High Street.