LUDLOW is being promised a festival that will have national appeal and attract visitors from all over the country.

A major literary event at festival time is planned but the details are still under wraps.

This will be part of a Fringe Festival that the organisers believe will be bigger and better than ever following the demise of the town's main arts festival.

“The Fringe has now become the Ludlow Festival,” said Anita Bigsby, the festival director.

She said that the event would be as good as ever despite the rejection of a bid for £93,000 from the Arts Council to cover funding for the next three years.

As a consequence of this hopes to start the festival with the re-launch of the Ludlow Carnival have been put on ice.

“It was not about the quality of the bid but just that so many people were applying,” said Ms Bigsby.

“We will be applying again in the near future with the hope of securing some funding for September.”

Diane Lyle, chairman of Friends of Ludlow Arts, and Ms Bigsby believe that while the future is bright it will be very different from the past.

“What happened with the loss of the (main arts) festival last year was not the end but the start of something that can be a new beginning," said Diane Lyle.

“I believe that the Fringe has the potential to become the new Ludlow Festival with a much broader appeal than in the past. It will come out of the community and not have a single event but many different components.”

However, there will be a part for Shakespeare with performances from the locally based Rooftop Theatre Group.

The Rooftop Theatre put on a production of Henry V at Ludlow Brewery earlier in the year and will be performing The Tempest at the same venue during the period of the former arts festival in late June and early July.

The Friends of Ludlow Arts has been reconstituted and already has 97 members.

It has so far made grants of £500 to the Ludlow Fringe, £500 to St Laurence's Church to help stage a programme of classical music in June, and £300 each for The Rooftop Theatre and for the literary event that is planned for the summer.

Ludlow Fringe is in its third year and its patron is the comedienne and television personality Jo Brand who performed in the town in 2014.

It is linked to other Fringe events in other parts of the country as well as all over the world.

But with the announcement that the Ludlow Festival will not be continuing, ‘The Fringe’ is now facing the challenge of stepping up to the plate and becoming the main event.

Last year the Fringe attracted audiences of more than 10,000 with 1,000 participants involved in events covering 40 different venues in and around Ludlow.

In the three weeks there were 100 different events ranging from street theatre to music including classical, rock and folk.

The programme for 2015 is already being finalised and will be ready for the beginning of May when people will be able to buy tickets both on-line and from Ludlow Assembly Rooms.

There will be GPS art, in which people draw while being tracked on GPS, live music, and comedy with Christian Reilly and Andrew Lawrence already booked.