MINEHEAD’S three-day Christmas Festival went down a treat last weekend, with an estimated 5,000 local people and visitors enjoying the festivities, organisers said.

The Parade and much of The Avenue were closed to traffic throughout, and people thronged into the town to enjoy everything from Santa and his grotto, a lantern procession, late night shopping, fairground rides, street entertainers, stalls and more.

The event had been touch and go in the days before, including that it might need to be cancelled for safety reasons, and a last-minute appeal to Minehead BID for funding for street entertainment – but the organisers, volunteer group Gateway Events, were delighted with the end result.

“Everyone enjoyed a great event, which went off without a hitch,” said chairman Bill Howard. “The community had a great weekend and it has been a great success, although there are ways we can further improve. We will have a meeting of representatives of all organisations to review and plan for 2020.”

There were enthusiastic comments from the community on social media: “[It] was a wonderful evening, great atmosphere and loads of people about, thank you Gateway Events for bringing some Christmas Cheer to the town,” said one.

“Absolutely fantastic display of stalls and activities. You’ve all done a smashing job, well done … and thank you for organising this for us.”

Bill said many local businesses found a significant increase in footfall, even though on the Friday evening many shops did not stay open to take advantage of the additional thousands in the centre of town.

He said Gateway Events had employed the services of an experienced team, to ensure the event was managed effectively and safely. At the end, although police were satisfied but unable to find the time to reconvene a meeting, a local police expert was able to advocate the event after visiting the location and concluding assessments positively, Bill said.

Minehead BID, which held an emergency board meeting a week before, after event organisers asked for help with the budget, contributed £4,000 for street entertainment.

Lots of pictures in tomorrow’s Free Press.