Welford Park’s Spectacle of Light brings some welcome fire to those lengthening nights

Country houses and gardens across Britain have embraced holiday illuminations as a way of boosting December footfall. There are at least a dozen valid options within an easy drive of our house. The really well-known ones, like Kew and Wisley, require serious advance planning to avoid their regular sell-outs. It’s a stroke of genius, therefore, that Welford Park decided to light up their grounds for the autumn half term instead, pulling in crowds the week around Halloween.

Still very much a family home, this Georgian pile north of Newbury isn’t regularly open to the public. If it  looks familiar, it’s because its lawns have hosted the Great British Bake Off for years. Locals know it best for its snowdrop trail, considered to be one of the best in the country.

Welford’s “Spectacle of Light” follows the same paths galanthophiles take in late January and February, though the autumn event is a lot showier. Instead of quiet stretches of white and green flowers in a winter forest you have lights of every hue. They blink, glow, dance and strobe. Some work in silence, others move to dramatic soundtracks.

It’s magnificent, and well worth the £25 per adult and £14 per child to get in.

The trail runs over about a mile, taking four big “S” curves to bring you from the estate’s main gate to the climax in front of the house itself. There’s a long procession under an avenue of gracious trees, leaves yet to drop for winter, with pink trunks and blue and green tops, like something out of Tolkien. 

Another avenue is Oriental-inspired, with red lanterns, tori gates and dragons. There are foliage tunnels cast into wild, abstract shapes by vivid uplighters. In a forest of slender saplings strips of light on each trunk change colour and dance to a dramatic symphony.

Further along, the soundtrack from Inception accompanies an avenue of half circles of light that fade in and out with different colours to the music. 

There’s a dramatic field of flame that shines next to a riverbed, calling to mind the campfires of a huge army the night before battle. Lights on the water that runs through the estate play further with pattern and movement. Solid-coloured lights bring the surrounding hills into focus, occasionally catching a perplexed cow wondering at the scene.

The trail ends in front of the house. Searchlights go up into the night sky while a projection of roses dances across the facade. The huge lawn in front features an installation of scores of illuminated pyramids with their tops cut off. (Bonus points to any reader who knows that this shape is a called a frustum.) Each is lit from within. They changed colour in time to tunes that sound distinctly Bollywood. Reminding you that it’s not just Halloween time, but Diwali.

Organisers have cleverly ended the trail with a food court to one side, so you can grab dinner from one of the stalls, set yourself up at a table and watch the frustums flash.

Welford Park’s timing is brilliant. By Christmas, we’re often stuck in a cycle of heavy rains and bitter winds with temperatures just above freezing. Late October is usually much more pleasant, often temperate. Foliage is still hanging on. The experience is both more comfortable, and more magical. And since few people bother to do anything specifically Christmas-themed with their lights, here’s no reason these events can’t work at any time throughout the winter to brighten our long, dark nights. I’d love to see more people follow Welford’s lead to fill winter nights outside of the obvious Christmas calendar.