Winners announced after West Sussex village hosted its biggest scarecrow festival yet

A total of £7,365.44 was raised for this year’s chosen charity, the Ferring-based Wadars Animal Rescue. Trophy maker and festival organiser Stuart Diver raised £1,300 towards the total with a rowing challenge during festival week, covering one mile on a rowing machine for every scarecrow that was built and officially registered.

The sale of maps at the official outlets, Pinkertons and festival sponsor The Orange Tree, and a one-day raffle during a talk by this year’s celebrity judge, broadcaster John Inverdale, also added to the total.

Ten finalists were invited to the awards evening at The Orange Tree on Monday, November 9, and the winners were announced by the festival team.

Top prize went to The Black Nail, a brilliant interactive pirate installation in Rife Way that included treasure boxes to open.

Second was Which Witch is Which? in Ferring Street and third was The Bus Stop in St Aubins Road.

Seven Special Recognition awards were presented, to The 3 Witches of Ferring, What the Ferring, Happy 100th Birthday David Attenborough, Elmer, Mounjaro, Dolly Parton and 40th Anniversary Ferring Country Centre, the largest installation, with 40 different scarecrows on display in the front field.

Posting on Facebook, the festival team said: “Thank you all so much for showing great community spirit and bringing Ferring together at this wonderful event. We would like to say a very big thank you to Stuart and Alan Puleston from Men in Sheds for the beautiful hand crafted trophies, to The Orange Tree for being perfect hosts, selling official maps and providing the vouchers for our prize winners and also Pinkertons, who sold so many official maps and shared a smile to all their customers.”

Some pumpkins on the trail contained letters and these spelled out Halloween cupcake. The trail answer winner was Sam Stephens.