The winner of the inaugural St Albans Advent Trail has been revealed following a public vote.

The Café on the Corner, a Catherine Street establishment that raises funds for Camphill Village Trust, lands a marketing prize worth over £2,000.

The Camphill Village Trust supports adults with learning disabilities, mental health problems and other support needs across nine locations. Locally, Camphill St Albans’ integrated urban community provides support and a thriving social network for adults with learning disabilities and mental health conditions.

The winning window featured illustrated scenes of St Albans, forest trees and cut out characters painted by the Camphill community, which included people from the café, art studio and Seeds of Nature allotment project.

The Café promoted their window on their social media sites, confident that their “pretty magical” window “designed and handmade by the people we support”, was winning material.

Their confidence was well founded, with over 30 per cent of the 1,003 votes cast being in support of Café on the Corner.

Cositas’ ‘Morning after the night before’ display and Rumball Sedgwick’s illuminated dolls’ houses came second and third place respectively.

Nicole Massey, day opportunities and social enterprise manager at Camphill Village Trust said: “We really enjoyed making the window display with our community. It took our art studio team around four weeks to create so it was really a labour of love!

“We’ve been operating on Catherine Street since 2001 so we’re delighted to have won the prize. Our community is really proud of their achievement.

“We can’t wait to work with Radio Verulam and the Herts Ad to use the marketing funds to promote the excellent coffees, cakes and lunch options that we have on offer to a wider audience.”

Organised by St Albans BID, the Advent Trail saw businesses unveiling their festive displays daily throughout December. Mia Collins was the lucky public voter, drawn at random from all the votes cast for the window displays. She has won a £100 St Albans Gift Card to be spent at over 75 businesses in St Albans city centre.

St Albans BID manager Helen Burridge said ‘We’re delighted with the feedback received about the first ever StAlbans Advent Trail. The daily reveals were great fun to follow in real life, and online, and the online poll was successful too. We hope the trail has highlighted the humour, creativity and character of many of our businesses around St Albans and wish all of our businesses and community a very Happy New Year!”