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Horncastle was alight with wonderful windows and a poignant tree to remember our loved ones.

Standing at the town’s main cross roads, the Tree of Light provides a familiar and welcome addition to Horncastle’s appearance at Christmas.

Now in its 12th year, it enables local people to remember lovedones who are no longer with us, and this year’s Tree has again attracted over 300 tributes, raising almost £5,000 to be shared between the St Barnabas Hospice Lincolnshire Trust, St Andrew’s Children’s Hospice in Grimsby and the Butterfly Hospice Trust in Boston.

The lights were switched on on Friday (December 10) by the mayor, Fiona Martin, accompanied the president of Horncastle Lions, Julian Cousins, Rotarian Stephen Holdaway and other organising committee members, and each name on the tribute list was read out as usual.

A recording of the ceremony will be posted on YouTube and on the website at horncastletreeoflight.co.uk.

Spokesman for the Tree of Light committee, Tim Peacock, said: “People have been incredibly generous once again. It is especially appropriate at Christmas to remember family members and friends who have died, either recently or in the past.

“The pandemic gives it extra poignancy. By sponsoring a light, donors are also supporting hard pressed hospices that do such much important work in our area. It makes the Tree of Light a very special project.”

On top of the Tree of Light’s illumination, Thursday also saw the launch of Horncastle’s first Window Wanderland event.

More than 100 homes, shops and community groups decorated their windows for the trail around town, with everything from snowy scenes and stained glass, to fairy lights and silhouettes.

Honcastle is the first town in Lincolnshire to take part in Window Wanderland.

There were also community art illuminations in the Market Place as part of East Lindsey District Council’s Festive Fabuloso.