A CHARITY car wash in Middlewich has raised £1,000 for a Winsford school choir.

The Golden Lion, in Chester Road, washed 200 cars at £5 each on Sunday, February 12, donating the proceeds to Oaklands School choir.

The school caters for children across Cheshire with special educational needs, and its choir enables students to experience competitions.

Golden Lion landlady Annie said: “It was a great success. We washed 200 cars and raised £1,000.

“With the cold weather, that encourages more cars because people don’t like doing it themselves. Because of the weather and dirty roads, they get very dirty.

“My daughter managed to get seven or eight friends from school in Sandbach and they were a great help. The rest of the workforce was made up of some of our staff and the John Brunner Lodge at Middlewich Masonic Hall.

“What it does is help them to get out to various locations. Without the funding that people raise for them, they wouldn’t be able to do that.

“It pays for coaches, food, hotels – expenses like that. The choir wouldn’t be able to function as it does without it.”

The choir won an international competition in Northern Ireland last year, and are set to return there in April.

Oaklands head of music Nicola Howbrigg said the money raised on Sunday will cover around a quarter of the 19-strong choir’s accommodation costs.

She said: “We have got two choirs – the full one is made up of 47 pupils, which is a third of our total, and our gifted and talented choir has 19.

“The choir opens that door from them and offers lot of things and experiences they would not ordinarily get. We use it to try and enrich their lives.

“We do an awful of fundraising and the [John Brunner] Lodge in particular have done an awful lot for us.

“It’s a constant drive and we do as much as we possibly can.”