Christmas spirit arrives at Windsor

, THE festive season has officially arrived at Windsor Castle, with beautiful Christmas trees and decorations created by royal staff for visitors.

From today, royal fans visiting the Queen’s Berkshire home can see a 23ft fir tree covered in gold decorations and around 7,000 lights in the castle’s majestic St George’s Hall.

Staff from the Royal Household have spent the past few days erecting the tree, a smaller fir in the nearby crimson drawing room, and other decorations throughout the state apartments to celebrate Christmas.

Richard Williams, the Royal Collection Trust’s learning curator, said: “The huge tree in St George’s Hall is from the Windsor Great Park, so it’s actually grown in the grounds surrounding the castle.

“It’s a Nordmann Fir and it has something like 7,000 separate lights on it, so it’s a major, major scale, it took a day and a half to decorate so teams were up very, very tall ladders.

“It’s very much for visitors, there are large numbers of people who go to the Royal Collection Trust website to see when the decorations are up because for many people, it marks the start of Christmas.”

Final preparations are made to a 15ft Christmas tree in the crimson drawing room at Windsor Castle