This year’s Ludlow Festival has finished with a bang and organisers are already looking forward to the 50th event next year.

They said they were “optimistic” about the festival finances.

See our photo gallery below

The event officially came to a close at 11pm last night with a pop concert and fireworks display.

Festival chairman, Jenny Vaughan, said organisers were pleased with how this year’s festival had gone and the fact yesterday’s concert sold out at the beginning of last week spoke for itself.

She said: “We had to have a waiting list in case any tickets became available. Suddenly the tickets just flew out of the window.”

The 1960s pop concert featured original artistes such as Chris Farlow, Mike Pender and Brian Poole plus The Manfreds.

Festival director, Bob Pugh, said the weather was fine for the finale sell-out event.

He said: “The concert was superb and the fireworks were wonderful as well.”

Mrs Vaughan said financially the team behind the festival would find out how well they had done when the books were balanced in September.

“But I will say I’m optimistic in that department,” she said.

Ticket sales were healthy throughout the whole festival which traditionally brings around £1 million in to the local economy.

This year’s main event, Richard III, which was performed nearly every day, sold well throughout and was reviewed by a number of national and local papers.

The festival drew to a spectacular close with what was billed as the biggest ’60s concert ever.Yesterday’s event was a complete sell-out with 3,000 people picnicking in the castle’s outer bailey.

Chris Farlowe kicked things off accompanied by Vanity Fare. Chris belted out his hits in style, including All or Nothing and his biggest number one, Out of Time.

He had people up and dancing from the word go and was followed on stage by notorious pants-splitter P J Proby.

Next up were Mike Pender and Brian Poole. They brought more people to their feet with a string of familiar hits including Needles and Pins, Sugar and Spice, and Twist and Shout.

The Manfreds and Paul Jones performed in the second half and by the end of the evening had everyone up dancing.

They ended their set with Build me up Buttercup and The Mighty Quinn and, for an encore, performed Doo Wah Diddy Diddy featuring a blistering harmonica solo from Paul Jones.

The evening ended with a brilliantly choreographed fireworks display. Hundreds of fireworks were set off from the castle’s inner bailey, in a display that just got better and better.

Review by Hannah Costigan