COLLECTORS came to the village at the weekend to see a “striking” exhibition.

The British Matchbox Label and Booklet Society came to Exeter Hall for collectors to meet up to discuss their shared passion.

The society was formed in 1945, when matchboxes commonly had collectable labels attached to them.

Kevin McCarthy, 59, came from Stokenchurch, Buckinghamshire to Saturday’s event.

He said: “I have been been collecting them since I was four or five years old. They don’t have the same cache as stamp collecting but they can be quite attractive.

“There are some very valuable ones if you go right back to the Victorian period. I have roughly a million matchbox labels now.”

Collecting match-related items such as matchboxes, matchbooks and their labels, is referred to as phillumeny.