The ten-day Calne Music and Arts Festival concluded at Marden House on Sunday with a performance from Calne Jazz Club and Medicine Creek.

The event’s final weekend had a packed line-up including a visit by children’s author Eileen Browne to the town library to hold a reading and drawing event for two to seven-year-olds.

The festival celebrated its 40th anniversary this year with 30 musical performances ranging from the Salisbury Cathedral Girl Choristers to pop funk band Mick O’Toole.

Festival president Carole Brown said: “The festival finished on a very high note on Sunday evening, every seat in Marden House was taken.

“The highlight was obviously BBC’s Any Questions, which 350 people attended in the John Bentley Hall.”

The event launched with a performance by students from John Bentley and St Mary’s schools of their production Our Town. Young musicians and singers from the schools also performed an eclectic mix of music at Marden Hall last Tuesday.

St Mary’s also linked up with Calne Heritage Centre to look at how poetry and music reflected the changing British moods during the First World War in Oh What A Lousy War.

Year 12 pupil Hannah from St Mary’s School said: “I enjoyed being part of the Calne festival and it was great fun.

“I found the poems very moving and the whole concert was extremely powerful. I had a brilliant week overall and hope that next year I can be involved once more.”

In the festival art competitions, John Harris won the public vote with Colours of Cornwall, ahead of Rick Stephenson’s Stevie and James Saxton’s Thames in Spate.

Mr Saxton picked up the Calne Artists Group Award, Alan Samuels won the Skylight Publishing Award and Rupert Procter won Calne Camera Club’s Digital Image Competition.

First prize in the poetry competition went to Gill Minter for War Grave, inspired by the 2010 discovery of a mass First World War grave near Fromelles, with Alexandra Cleverley and James Harpham in second and third.

Year six pupil Beatrice Watts from St Margaret’s Preparatory School won the u16 category with her poem A Moonlit War for its striking visual imagery and understanding of how beauty and horror can go side by side.