Lyndhurst Christmas Lights

Don’t forget! Not long until the Lyndhurst village fun day on Saturday 4th December starting at 10:00am

Lyndhurst Village Lighting and Decorations Committee has begun a fund-raising appeal campaign to restore the Christmas lights to its full display, so much loved by the Village and visitors over Christmas. They have been missing now for two years, as half the Christmas lights display had to be removed due to safety issues. 

The committee listened to the disappointment expressed by the village at the loss of string lights. If our fund raising is successful, the possibility of the string lights across the street will return. We are also working on a different design.

However, for this to become a reality, there are, of course, additional costs. Whilst we have the funding to repeat last year’s displays, the return of the strings requires an additional £15,000 to secure them for three years. We are hoping to expand our display even further in the future if we can encourage enough support through donations.

To achieve this, the village as a community, will need to pull together once more to reach our target. We, as a committee, are going full out to make the effort to light up the village for Christmas as before. So, to achieve our target our fund-raising appeal begun on the 1st August.

We are exceedingly driven as a group in providing the return of the Christmas lights that we all know and love in the village and are looking to gain support where we can. A small committee team is exploring avenues of obtaining funding from sponsors. Another team is producing fund raising ideas, such as quizzes, raffles. We also have a donation page on our website where donations can be made by using our crowd funding page.

For more information visit our donations page.
Or our Facebook page: Lyndhurst Village Decorations
Or take a look at our Instagram: @lyndhurstdecorationscommitte

My name is Michael Judd, welcome to you all, hope you are well and staying safe.

I begin by thanking once again the voluntary contributions of the committee consisting of Stephen Short, Ken Crabbe, Ian Craig, Bryan Sheldon, Sophia Watts Hilary Brand and Emilie Stevens for their tireless hard work and support throughout the previous year’s activities, especially George Bisson who has once again undertaken the secretary’s role which has been in very difficult times.

The decorating and lighting of the village has now entered its forty-second year and my thanks go to the dedicated people, especially our volunteers, along with the committee who are determined to decorate the village for the benefit of all who live, work and visit Lyndhurst. General communications are always on going with our monthly meetings, the publication ‘What’s On’ advertorials, website, social media and our notice boards.

The Christmas decorations in the village of Lyndhurst have always tried to set the bar at a very high level and continues to be rated one of the best in the New Forest and Hampshire. With this in mind, I was pleased on behalf of the team, to receive the award ‘Parish Champions’ for 2019.

My thanks to our treasurer Joan Bisson who continued the hard work to keep our accounts in good order. The general costs to present the Christmas display’s is between £6000-£8000 year on year and without the retail sponsorship this would not be possible.

Our electrical engineers are R & M Electricals and our thanks go to Ben Chiverton in particular, who carried out the work to our specifications with the Committee being focused and moving forward in implementing all health and safety issues. This has involved publication on contact details to all new and existing outlets.

Our thanks also go to the Community Centre, R & M Electricals and Lyndhurst Fire Station for their support in relation to storage of equipment.

During the past years, due to Hampshire County Council guidelines to obtain the relevant licenses, stress tests on all the catenary anchors were required. With the constant health and safety changes, a structural engineer was required to assess the catenary wiring and anchor points across the village and sign them off as compliant before we could obtain the relevant licence especially as Lyndhurst has the A35 as the main road.

This was undertaken at a cost of £1500 with the unfortunate result that the fixings and catenaries in the village were not up to standard and were condemned accordingly with the result they could not be signed off and were duly removed.

As you may appreciate this decision was deeply disappointing and upsetting as we were ready for the string light installation to progress as usual.

Decisions had to be evaluated with the current situation and basically there were four options that could made in relation to obtaining the licence and public liability.

a) do nothing

b) utilise the present strings to run horizontally in the village.

c) purchase addition Christmas Tree Lights to run horizontally in the village.

d) To install up-lighters in the village at various vantage points.

We all felt that we should do something and after long discussions, views with our electrician and costing, it was voted that we install 52 up-lighters throughout the village.

We all knew that nothing would replace the string light effect, especially in the middle of the High Street, but hoped we could start with a blank canvass offering a warmth of colour throughout the village alongside our existing traditional Christmas displays with opportunities for further displays in the future.

We all believed doing something, rather than doing nothing, was the best way forward.

After consulting and agreement from the owners of relevant properties the installations were completed.

During this period, we were asked by the Parish Council and the retail sector if the catenary wiring could be reinstated. We agreed that we could undertake a viability and feasibility study and after considerable work over the past 9 months the cost for full installations was ascertained with an estimate in excess of £50,000. This again is all subject to an initial stress test on anchor points to be signed off by a structural engineer before anything can proceed.

We as a committee believe this is a highway and engineering undertaking and passed it on so that we can concentrate our efforts on the village lighting, and decorations as usual.

We understand the passion and enthusiasm of all the village from which we are an integral part and believe we are in a transitional period going forward welcoming any constructive ideas and criticism that may be received. I am sure that 2021/22 will be a challenging year to all concerned, especially in the present climate.

This year we will again be presenting a Christmas display, however this can only be achieved by the continued support of the community and businesses of Lyndhurst.  Once again, my thanks go to you all.

Just four pictures from our Facebook album.

See the full album of 68 pictures on our Facebook account – note Facebook account not needed to view these.

DUE TO THE CORONOVIRUS MEASURES THE AGM HAS BEEN  POSTPONED
A REVISED DATE WILL BE PUBLISHED WHEN IT IS POSSIBLE TO SCHEDULE IT