A tiny £6 Christmas tree planted in 1979 by Avril and Christopher Rowlands in Inkberrow, Worcestershire, now stands over 50ft tall and has become a local landmark.
Since 2004, the couple has adorned it with thousands of lights, raising over £25,000 for charities, including the Midlands Air Ambulance this year.
Despite rising energy costs, they lit the tree on December 6, attracting 2,000 people.
The lights will shine nightly until January 6, continuing a beloved tradition in one of Britain’s darkest villages.
Since 2004, the couple has adorned it with thousands of lights, raising over £25,000 for charities, including the Midlands Air Ambulance this year.
Despite rising energy costs, they lit the tree on December 6, attracting 2,000 people.
The lights will shine nightly until January 6, continuing a beloved tradition in one of Britain’s darkest villages.
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FunTranscript
00:00I'm Avril and my husband's Chris. We've been married 51 years now. We moved up here to
00:17Inkborough from London in 1978 and we liked the fact that there were no streetlights then
00:24in the village. And we moved in November and the post office up the road had a little outside tree
00:31with six lights on it and we thought, oh that looks really nice. As we have a corner house,
00:36we planted a Christmas tree and we bought a tree that has never been in the house,
00:42planted it in the front garden. It's a corner house so it stands out well and we put six
00:48lights on it. Now, 46 years later, it's 50 foot plus high. It has sets of lights in 25s and 50s
01:00but there are 42 of them at the moment on the tree. About a thousand lights. Yes, about three
01:07thousand watts if you're interested. Some years ago, some friends helped us dig a trench. We put
01:13a cable in a pipe to the tree. So it's quite a lot of electricity but it's worth it because it's
01:23become a village institution in a way. It's become a village institution and we know people in the
01:30village who have said to us, I used to go to sleep looking at those lights when I was a little girl
01:36and now I take my children to the switch on which is rather nice. The last 20 years we've done a
01:42charity collection. The lights are put on the top of the tree by S.E. Davies and Redditch who are a plant
01:49high contractor and they come with a low loader and a cherry picker and they've done it for nothing
01:54for 20 years. That would be an extraordinary amount of money if you had to pay for it. We couldn't afford it.
01:58And they come and take them down again afterwards. We couldn't afford it and for 20 years we've been having a
02:04switch on with a charity collection. There are so many worthwhile charities that we choose a
02:10different one each year. This year it's the Midlands Air Ambulance who only receive funding, they don't
02:17get any government funding. It's all volunteers and businesses and individuals. We normally have a
02:24fairground organ but that couldn't come this year. Paul Davies normally comes with a steam
02:28tractor engine and he can't come this year. A wonderful company called the Really Awesome Coffee
02:33Company bringing their really awesome coffee, mince pies and refreshments and then we let off
02:40fireworks in the back garden. So it should be fun. That's this Saturday at half past six, between half past six, quarter to seven.