13395/1TRUMPETER Stephen Berryman will welcome Prince Charles to the town hall tomorrow with a fanfare written for the royal visit.

Wearing the red, period-style costume of a royal trumpeter, the 19-year-old from Back Lane will be playing A Fanfare to Marlborough written just for the occasion by composer David Fanshawe.

Mr Fanshawe, who lives at Ramsbury, has written more than 50 scores for film and TV including When the Boat Comes In and Flambards and for the movie Tarka the Otter. He has also composed several choral works, including African Sanctus.

Mr Fanshawe wrote the piece in one day after meeting Stephen at a Wootton Bassett Orchestra rehearsal last week. He said: "Steve said he had a terrible time finding a fanfare for solo trumpet.

"I asked him over to my studio in Ramsbury and I wrote it while he was there, basing it on my fanfare Planet Earth I had written previously.

"I adapted it to be a fanfare and march for Steve to play when Prince Charles arrives at the town hall."

Stephen, who is on a gap year before going to Manchester University to study computer science, has been playing the trumpet since he was at Christchurch Cathedral Choir School in Oxford. He said: "I played piano and had to choose a second instrument so I chose the trumpet."

Meanwhile, the town is counting down for the launch of the four days of charter anniversary celebrations.

At 3pm today, the High Street will be closed to traffic in readiness for the first presentation of the community play, Wheels of Time, at 7pm.

It will remain closed all day tomorrow for the visit by Prince Charles and the second performance of the Wheels of Time at 7pm.

The street will be closed again on Saturday from 5pm until midnight for the re-enactment, at 7pm, of the 1642 Battle of Marlborough.

On Sunday the road will be closed for the procession of Wiltshire mayors. They will leave the town hall at 11.15am and parade to the Marlborough College chapel for a noon service of thanksgiving. There will be a repeat of the civil war mock battle at 3pm, and the street will reopen at 6pm.

During the road closures police advise drivers to use temporary car parks being set up on The Common.

The two reconstructions of the Battle of Marlborough, when the Royalists stormed the town, promise to be the most dramatic events of the celebrations. More than 50 houses were burnt and hundreds of prisoners were marched off to Oxford.

The re-enactments by members of the English Civil War Society will feature musketeers, pikemen and cavalry, with the occasional cannon shot. The society will be setting up a period-style camp in the Priory Gardens, which the public can inspect between 10am-5pm both days.