A CHARITY shop in Grange has scooped a nationwide gong for its stunningly festive shop window display.

St Mary's Hospice charity shop on Yewbarrow Terrac, has been announced as the first-prize winner in the Acopia annual competition to find the best-dressed charity shop Christmas display for 2022.

The nationwide competition, now in its fourth year, is run by Acopia Group Ltd, a retail shop fitting and packaging supply company, and celebrates charity shop creativity.

It attracted 97 entries from charity shops all over the UK.

The prize for the winning shop is to have popular charity shop advocate Jennifer Graham - aka Charityshopgirlcsg who, with her huge social media following of 72,000 on Tiktok, and 17,000 on Instagram, will work with St Mary's Hospice to create some exciting social content to promote the charity.

She will be volunteering for the day at the Grange shop in the new year.

The event was judged by Jen along with Acopia's Terry Gardner.

They commented that the entries for the competition were incredibly hard to judge with impressive hard work and creativity.  

On the winning window at the St Mary's Hospice shop, judges commented that the Christmas tree dress was 'spectacular' and the multitude of baubles was 'so Christmassy' and was a 'well-deserved winner'.

Linzi Buckmaster, manager of the Grange shop says:

"We collected baubles for a whole year for the display!

"We don't have a budget for visual merchandising so all items used were donated.

"The dress was made from a deconstructed tree.

"I was inspired by an image on social media a few years ago of festive decorations in London restaurant 34 Mayfair.

"I wanted to cover the whole shop ceiling but that was a bit ambitious as even with the help of our volunteers and family it still took us two whole days and an evening to complete the display!  

"It was totally worth it, as we are delighted to be the competition winners and the publicity is much appreciated for our Hospice, based in Ulverston."

Other competition winners were second place Dogs Trust in Wetherby and third place Cornwall Hospice Care in Truro.