A Droitwich dad of two has taken his Christmas decorations to the next level with a stunning free musical display. 

Ed Bond, who works in IT, says he has spent over 40 hours building and programming 4,100 lights - which are individually controlled by a computer network - to align with a playlist of 12 classic family-friendly anthems.

The Christmas light fanatic's current sequences include tracks from much-loved films and artists such as The Polar Express, Santa Shark, Michael Bublé, The Greatest Showman and Disney's Frozen. 

Ed has been running the four hour shows at his family home in The Holloway to raise money for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the season of good will.

He said: "I originally just wanted to do a show for my kids, neighbours and friends, because I've always put plenty of lights up.

"But then I thought it could also be a great way to raise money for charity, which is when I decided to do it for the NSPCC as well.

"Because I've only been running it for a week or so I'm only getting a car stop every so often, or people slowing down and watching as they walk past, so it's hard to estimate how many people have actually seen the show yet.

"But the funny thing is if you look on Google Maps in the evening you can see the traffic slows down at around 5 o'clock as it goes past the house.

"I must admit I did find that particularly amusing and couldn't help but take a screenshot and send it to a few mates."

Ed was first inspired to take on the project by Nick Wright, a barrister from Stourport who had originally set up 2,000 small lights to match a playlist of 14 rock-style Christmas songs in 2019. 

Having visited the display with his two young children, he went away and tried to construct his own similar setup, an endeavour which was originally largely fruitless.

However, a year later he reached out to Mr Wright, who invited him round his house and introduced him to a group called the European Lighting Fanatics, an international collection of people interested in building musical Christmas light displays, otherwise known as ELFs. 

For the last year he's been attending free online training courses every Thursday with the group while simultaneously plotting his own display.

Fast forward around 40 hour's worth of work and 12 complete sequences later, and Ed's now got his own spectacular musical light show. 

However, he insisted he's not planning on stopping here.

"This is very much year one, next year I'm aiming to go much larger and have loads more lights.

"I changed jobs in the summer so I couldn't devote the time or money into the project I had wanted to, so it isn't quite as big as I'd have liked.

"It's very much a drug in that sense, you just want to get bigger and better," he added.

Ed will be running his show every evening between now and Christmas at his house in The Holloway, WR9 7AH, with a big finale planned for Christmas eve. 

He's even putting on a special kids show this Sunday which will include fireworks to end the display.

For further updates, you can join Ed's Facebook page, here. Or if you'd like to donate, you can do so by following the link to the Just Giving page, here.