WOMAD director Chris Smith is already gearing up for next year’s world of music, arts and dance, as the festival will mark the event’s 30th birthday.

After spending more than a week overseeing the dismantling of the site and having everything moved off the Charlton Park Estate, Mr Smith said he was turning his gaze to next summer.

He said: “Because it is going to be our 30th anniversary, we want to start signing up the artists we want.

“It will also be the Olympics so it’s important we have the infrastructure sorted out.”

This year’s festival, the fifth in its current location, saw an increase in ticket sales of 29 per cent as 35,000 music fans descended on Malmesbury.

Mr Smith said: “I think it’s partly down to the excellent event we had last year and people going away and telling their friends.

“We’re getting back up to the numbers we had before the mud fest in 2007.”

This year Prince Harry was one of the revellers, the third year he’s attended as a guest of Lord Suffolk, who owns the Charlton Park Estate.

Malmesbury photographer Robert Peel commissioned this stunning aerial shot of this year’s WOMAD music festival.

The photograph will feature in an exhibition hosted in Malmesbury Town Hall, including landscape shots of Malmesbury taken by Mr Peel and work by other artists.

Mr Peel, who has lived in the town for 20 years, said: “Malmesbury is very significant historically and people perhaps don’t appreciate just how much.

“There was a lack of good images of the town and we weren’t showing it off in its best light.

“I’ve been taking photographs of Malmesbury for some time and I let community groups use them.”