BEVERLEY Minster is celebrating a bumper windfall after its Christmas Tree Festival raised £5,000.

Businesses, charities and the town council sponsored trees for the display.

The festival attracted more than 1,500 paying visitors and hundreds of children.

In addition, the Family Carol Concert on December 10 attracted a 200-strong audience to hear BAFTA Award-winner Anna Maxwell Martin, the Minster Choirs and the Barton Town Band.

Minster vicar Jeremy Fletcher said: "It was an outstanding success.

"We are thrilled to have raised such an amount, but I'm more pleased by the community links we have made, and by the number of people who were able to use this amazing building to pray and reflect as well – many of them thrilled to be seeing it in a completely new way."

Numbers were boosted by wet weather on the afternoon of Beverley's Festival of Christmas.

Thousands of people were in town to hear TV gardener Charlie Dimmock launch the parade and see Father Christmas.

The Victorian Market and a host of fantastic family attractions made the Festival the biggest ever. But the weather turned wet in the afternoon and many people headed down Highgate to the Minster.

Beverley mayor Councillor Peter Astell said: "The Christmas Tree Festival could have gone one of two ways – it was either going to be a huge success or a failure. I'm pleased it did so well.

"Bad weather on the Sunday of the Festival of Christmas helped them.

"People had been around the Christmas market in the morning but then in the afternoon the Minster was really packing them in.

"I live in Highgate and it was thronged with folk in the early afternoon."

The sermon during the Christmas Tree Festival's closing service spoke of the depth of the community links demonstrated by the groups who had sponsored and decorated trees.

More than 50 real Scottish fir trees had been decorated.

Children from local schools helped decorate the trees.

Neil Pickford, Minster virger , said all the trees were more than 6ft high and made a spectacular display on both sides of the knave.

He said: "There was a fantastic response to our appeal for sponsors. Some sponsors decorated the trees themselves with volunteers stepping in to help those who were unable to do the decorating."