Epping Christmas Lights 2014

Many residents will not know who puts up the Christmas Lights in Epping. Most residents will be aware though that for many years up until this year, we used to have real christmas trees suspended above the shopfronts with nails and string (yes, really!) and may be wondering why this has changed.

The tradition of putting real trees up in the High Street was started by the Epping Town Centre partnership so long ago that only a select few will probably be able to give a defintive date and I am not amongst them. Back in these days the Town Council had nothing to do with them at all.

In more recent times (and by recent I mean the last 20 years), the trees were paid for by the Town Council but put up and taken down by volunteers from Epping Rotary Club.

This year, with the volunteers growing ever wiser but sadly no younger, the Town Council took the decision that the time was right to do something different. We have invested in all new Christmas lights for 2014. We have kept the theme of trees with warm white lights but now have re-usable trees, which are fixed on brackets that have the ability to be used at other times for other things, possibly hanging baskets.

We have also lit up a number of real trees in the High Street at the top of Station Road and on the Town green. The centre piece of the new illuminations was to have been light curtains on all four faces of the St John's Church tower, however sadly the permission to do from the Dioceses (not the local church, who were as keen as us!) was not received in time for us to get the lights up. We hope this and others will be added next year.

Please let us have feedback about our illuminations, both good and bad as it will help Council decide what to do in future years. Where would you like to see more lights in future?

See more pictures on our Christmas Lights Gallery