A FAIRYTALE castle has been built by a Huddersfield company to transform a major retail centre into a winter wonderland.
Lockwood-based KD Decoratives was commissioned by bosses at Bristol’s massive Cribbs Causeway shopping complex to create the 60ft tall medieval castle as the centrepiece of its Christmas attraction.
And the castle is so big that six articulated lorries will be called into service on Monday to ferry it in pieces to its destination.
The castle sections had to be put together in the yard at KD’s Albert Street premises for final testing because the completed structure is too big to fit indoors.
It was built using an aluminium ‘pod’ as its base. KD’s sculptors then covered the steel with carved polystyrene to create texture and depth.
The castle is so large that it had to go through the full building and planning application and had to be passed by structural engineers.
It contains more than 20 tons of steel and will sit on an eight-ton steel base plate once in place at Cribbs Causeway.
It also has more than 23 tons of concrete buttresses and 20 tons of sand bag ballast to ensure that Santa does not take to the skies if the winds from the Bristol Channel get too high!
Inside, the building houses Santa’s grotto, a ticket office and photography area. Children will be greeted by a magical ice queen who will guide them through a crystal-encrusted ice cave with animated ice miners on their journey to meet Santa.
The castle also features a spectacular lighting show that will take place at planned times throughout the day. As the music begins, the castle will light up and be washed with different shades of light as it changes mood and appearance in time to the music.
Jamie Kitchen-Dunn, UK sales director for KD, said: “We have pre-built the castle here in Lockwood to ensure that everything is perfect and we have covered any potential problems before installing the structure on site.
“Everything we have used on the project has had to become bigger! Our standard tools felt like toys when we started to construct the castle. Even our forklifts have had to be ‘supersized’ to handle five-ton loads.
Click here to open a gallery of more pictures of the castle as it changes colour and what it looks like in the day time
“The castle has become a real labour of love for me and the team, who have been working long hours to ensure that it delivers a truly magical experience for the children and adults of Bristol.”
The castle will be the focal point of the centre’s eight-week Christmas sales drive before it is taken apart again and returned to KD’s site for storage.
The “significant” four-year contract means the castle will make repeated journeys between Huddersfield and Bristol over the next four festive seasons.
Mr Kitchen-Dunn said the contract came on top of KD’s regular work building displays for numerous retail centres in the run-up to the Christmas trading period.
The difficult retail climate meant shopping centres were having to work even harder at attracting customers – and that meant providing eye-catching displays, he said.
KD Decoratives, founded more than 30 years ago, provides animated and static displays for shopping centres, cruise liners, theme parks and other leisure venues.
It has also supplied decorations for customers in Europe, the Middle East, South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Other notable contracts have included creating outsize Wallace and Gromit figures for Blackpool Pleasure Beach and building a 15ft clock tower for Legoland Windsor.
