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White Light Events and Santa's Choice at Painshill Park
One of the 18th century's greatest landscape parks, Painshill Park was created by the Hon Charles Hamilton between the years 1738 and 1773 until he ran out of money. Subsequently held by a series of private owners, the park fell into decay from 1948 until 1980 when it was purchased by Elmbridge Borough Council. Since 1981 the Painshill Park Trust has been responsible for the restoration of the park and its plantings, buildings and lake, recently winning the Small Visitor Attraction of the Year category at the Visit London Awards.
Over the Christmas period, an island in the middle of the lake provides an ideal location for Santa's Grotto. For the second year in a row, White Light Events was asked to provide lighting for the Grotto itself, and for the park and its landmark buildings including the Gothic Temple, Turkish Tent, Ruined Abbey and Mausoleum which visitors travel past on their way to the lake.
In charge of the project was White Light Events' Jon Coventry, implementing a lighting design by the company's Jason Larcombe. "To light the landmark buildings, we used a combination of 500W floods, 400W and 150W coloured MBIs, and Parcans, providing a stunning backdrop as visitors are transported to the lake by land-train," Coventry explains. "On the island itself, four CityColor 2500W colour-changing external floodlights and a number of 1800W ArenaVisions light the larger trees, making the island as a whole look eye catching from a distance."
Visitors access the island via a small pedestrian bridge, and walk along the path to the Grotto itself. "Positioned along the path are a number of units including 500W outdoor floods and 150W and 400W MBIs, not only to light the foliage and trees, but also to provide sufficient ambient lighting for people to see where they are going."
In the Grotto itself, the Painshill Park team provided decoration with 18th Centaury style holies made using the original technique, in addition to fairy lights and flicker candles bought from White Light Sales. White Light Events supplemented these with additional birdies to provide highlights to the foliage. "We also felt that the Grotto and the Crystal Corridor that exits from it needed a magical feel; to achieve this we used Ayrton LED moving lights. Each unit is programmed using its own menu-driven sequence, removing the need for a separate lighting control, and the LED's low power requirements allowed us to create a slowly moving constant colour changing atmosphere even with the small power supply available." Power for the rest of the widely-distributed site came from generators, with all of the mains distribution supplied by White Light Events.
In picture: the Pedestrian Bridge to Santa's grotto and the Crystal Corridor lit by Ayrton LED moving lights (photos David Morrell)
16th December 2004
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