Darwen's 'truly terrible' Christmas tree swapped after backlash
Darwen's market square Christmas tree arrived looking less 'festive centrepiece' and more 'found behind a skip'. After one resident called it "truly terrible", the council sent it back and ordered a proper one.
Every town wants a magnificent Christmas tree. Darwen ordered one too. What turned up in the market square looked like it had already done three Christmases, a stag do and a fortnight on a roundabout.
The sparse, worse-for-wear fir was put up by Blackburn with Darwen Council ahead of the town’s Christmas lights switch-on. It did not take long for the reviews to come in. One resident sent Councillor Matt Jackson a photo with a caption that needs no improvement: “This is truly terrible.”
AI illustration – one pigeon too many. Not the actual tree.
The council, to its credit, took it on the chin. “How many times have you ordered something, only for it to arrive and not be quite what you were expecting?” it asked, which is the most relatable thing a local authority has ever said. Cllr Anthony Shaw was even more candid: “I go away for a few hours, and chaos happens. Someone somewhere messed up, we will get to the bottom of it.” The replacement, he promised, would be “a… well, a living one”.
Listeners to BBC Radio Lancashire were merciless. One reckoned New York’s famous Rockefeller tree “has nowt on this”; another said they’d seen “better trees thrown out after Christmas”.
AI illustration – out with the old. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)
Council leader Phil Riley sorted a swap with the original contractors, and a much fuller tree went up on Wednesday 11 November – just in time for tonight’s lights switch-on. The council says it has been told the new one is “the best one ever”.
No word yet on whether the old tree has been offered a quieter job somewhere, perhaps as a coat stand.
Reported by BBC News (David Saville, 11 Nov 2026) and BBC News (Richard Baker), with further coverage from the Lancashire Telegraph and the Lancashire Evening Post.
Images: main photo – “Market Hall, Darwen” by Phil Platt (philandju), 25 November 2014, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph / Wikimedia Commons (representative; not the tree). Illustrations: Gorilla Gazette / AI-generated.
