Simon Whaley gets into the festive spirit with a visit to lit-up Ledbury

■ Ledbury has a proud poetic past: local boy John Masefield was Poet Laureate in 1930, while Elizabeth Browning spent her childhood in a nearby village.

■ The bell tower of Ledbury’s church is one of seven in Herefordshire that is separate from the main church building. The 18th-century spire sits on a 13th-century tower.

■ Nearby Eastnor Castle is no stranger to the television screen, having been used as a set for the BBC’S 1976 and 1994 adaptations of “Little Lord Fauntleroy”. It’s also starred in episodes of ITV’S “Rumpole Of The Bailey” and “The Casebook Of Sherlock Holmes”, and Sky TV’S “Agatha Raisin”.

■ You can still see the damage caused by musket shots fired during the Civil War in the wooden doors of the north porch of Ledbury’s Parish Church.