While there are serious fears about the lights going out on Whittington Castle, trustees of the popular tourist attraction lit it up at the weekend to drive support for their kickstarter.

The castle, with roots back to Norman times, was lit up in many colours on Saturday night by Scott Cooper from ASG Entertainment, as trustees try to find £50,000 to secure its future.

Jonjo Evans, one of the trustees, says the light show was more to publicise their campaign, rather than make it a spectacle for the village – given the current lockdown rules on public gatherings – and also confirmed the finding of the funds is down to the trustees.

“The ownership of the castle is irrelevant as the trustees are responsible for the running of it,” he said.

“The lights were on for about an hour so we could take shots to promote our campaign on social media.

“The company who did the lights came to us and offered them for free in return for some promotion and they did it for us.

“It was very low-key because we couldn’t do anything because of the lockdown rules – there’s no way we could have publicised this as we would have had too many people.

“Hopefully we can to do something for the village and lighting up the castle when it’s suitable to do so.

“Libby Gliksman is a talented singer and she has offered to do a concert and hopefully we’ll be able to do that.

“But, it it is important to say, we have had lots of ideas about how we can raise money – including free offers of re-enactments – but all the ideas are based on being able to open the castle up.

“The kickstarter has gone very well – we’re up to around £7,500 and we’ve had a few donations over £1,000 but we need a few more of them.”

Jonjo admitted he was saddened to see some criticism made of the way the trustees have tried to raise funds to keep the castle going.

He also moved to remind people that staff there have been furloughed, making it harder to open on a case-by-case basis.

“We’ve had criticism on social media about not being open to sell takeaway ice creams and coffee when it was half-term last week,” he said.

“But we can’t part-furlough people – I asked people to come forward as volunteers but no-one did.

“We have worked hard to keep the business going but it’s getting harder. We are working on grants and something Heritage Lottery Fund.”