An Abergavenny Craftsman is celebrating after securing the prestigious Champion of Champions award at this year’s Royal Welsh Show.

Simon Meredith scooped this year’s top prize for his excellent handicraft work which included a magpie, an alphabet dinosaur and a group of frogs.

Having entered several different items of craftwork, Simon secured four 1st prizes, and a 2nd and 3rd place award securing the most overall points in this year’s craft section, which featured over 100 entries from across the country.

His achievement is all the more impressive given that this was his first year entering into the Royal Welsh Show.

Simon, who works as a Maths teacher in Caerleon Comprehensive School, makes most of his craftwork from rubbish waste including cardboard packaging and discarded items. A big advocate for recycling and reusing different materials, he regularly sources items from local businesses as well as Monmouthshire Reuse Centre in Llanfoist.

Speaking to the Chronicle, Simon Meredith said: “With my career it can be hard to find the time to commit to my artwork which is more of a hobby for me. However I entered some craftwork at last year’s Winter Show in Builth Wells and had some positive feedback, so thought I would enter more work this year and I’m obviously delighted that it has gone so well, and would like to thank all the craft judges for awarding me this accolade.”

Simon’s artwork has already been proudly on display in Abergavenny with the school-teacher having created and designed paper doves that were displayed by many businesses throughout the town during lockdown titled ‘Doves of Hope’, as a way of lifting the spirits of people struggling during the Covid pandemic.

Despite his teaching career taking up much of his time, Simon is a frequent contributor of craftwork at local summer shows, having produced craftwork for local shows including Usk and Llanthoney in the past as well as creating the notice boards for the Hay Festival. This year Simon has even been asked to be a judge for the craft section at the upcoming Usk Show.

As well as teaching Maths, Simon also teaches well-being classes for students in his school and his dream is to use his craftwork skills to run well-being classes in the community.

Simon added: “I would love to create well-being classes in the community through craftwork. I have enjoyed helping the students with their well-being and think there is a real scope for transferring that to helping people in the community.”