London’s Borough Market has gotten into the Christmas spirit by creating the world’s longest Christmas paperchain.
From Borough Market:
The UK’s longest paper chain has been unveiled at Borough Market. Members of the public were invited to spread the love by contributing festive messages to the chain which at 472 metres long, is over 150 meters longer than the height of The Shard (306m).
The paperchain included over 150 hand written #BoroughChristmasWishes by visitors to the market and 367 messages from around the world. Even Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, added his Christmas Wish with, ‘I wish for lots more surplus food to reach Londoners who need it this Christmas and in 2017 #BoroughXmasWishes’ on the chain.
The festive coloured red, white and green paperchain took a team of six just over 12 hours in total to create, with a further 13.5 hours to install overnight and into the early hours of Wednesday morning. The installation also includes over 150 meters of twinkling fairy lights as well as cascading Christmas foliage and sparkling baubles.
The last link of the paperchain was connected to switch on the lights by 90-year-old Lotti Henley, Founder of charity PlanZheroes, which aims to tackle food waste. Over the last two years traders at Borough have donated surplus food at the end of each Saturday’s trading day, which has resulted in the creation of over 50,000 meals for vulnerable people in London to date.
Here’s a short video on how it was made:
Borough Market will be open every day in the run up to Christmas from Wednesday 7th December through to 2pm on Christmas Eve so you can it for yourself!
Author: Jonathan Thomas
Jonathan is a consummate Anglophile who launched Anglotopia.net in 2007 to channel his passion for Britain. Londontopia is its sister publication dedicated to everything London.