Music teacher Caroline Lumsden is lifting the spirits of her self-isolated neighbours - by serenading them with her violin from her cottage garden.

Neighbours of the mum of four in Frampton-on-Severn have been joining in sing-songs with Caroline - from a safe distance - after she started playing in a new garden shed which she uses as a music room.

The musical sessions came about because Caroline, founder of the 40 year old Gloucestershire Academy of Music,  wanted to record tunes for her dementia sufferer husband Alan and other residents of a nearby nursing home where he lives.

"This all started when I came back from Italy and had to self isolate for three weeks," said Caroline.

"I couldn't visit my husband because of the risk so I thought I would record some music and songs for him and the others at the Old Vicarage home.

"I offered to go up and play outside the home so Alan and the residents could see and hear me but the staff didn't want me to do that in case I was infected with coronavirus and touched something that they might later touch.

"So when I had a new shed delivered to become a music room I decided to use it to record myself doing some old songs like 'Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag' so I could Whatsapp it to the home to be played to the residents.

"Suddenly I realised that neighbours passing by in the street were stopping to listen.

"Then my next door neighbour rang to say it was amazing and she was finding it really uplifting in these dreadful times."

Now Caroline is regularly performing from her garden gate for the neighbours and passers by - and some are joining in the singing or even accompanying Caroline on their own instruments.

"There are quite a few people around me - a cul de sac of houses behind my cottage and people often walk along the street outside to go to the village shop," she said.

"They all seem to be appreciating the music at this time when no-one can go anywhere much and there are no entertainments on offer."

The idea has developed to the extent that her musical family of four children and nine grandchildren living as far afield as Manchester, London and the Lake District, have together formed a virtual orchestra and recorded music she can send to the nursing home.

"Our first effort is 'Daisy Daisy' with my son on drums from his home, my daughter and granddaughter on cellos, another two grandchildren singing," she said.

"It's brilliant. I've been sending it to lots of friends."

Meanwhile, Caroline is taking part in a project being launched by GAM - the Gloucestershire Academy of Music - to provide online tuition to students in their own homes. Instructors who normally run sessions at the Academy in Commercial Road, Gloucester, six days a week are gearing up to offer group and individual tuition on 'GAMCam.

Viv Hargreaves, chair of the academy, said she is delighted they are able to keep their service running remotely during the national coronavirus lockdown.

"It felt like the day the music died when there was no mad scramble to get my grandson Louis to his Saturday music sessions at the Academy," she said.

"Only days earlier, we had to make the heartbreaking decision to close down GAM’s two music centres, in line with schools and other educational institutions shutting.

"But then something happened - which meant the music didn't die after all.

"Our artistic director Glyn Oxley held a very successful group theory lesson online, while violin teacher Catherine Smith popped up on Skype and gave my grandson his violin lesson along with five others.

"Our founder Caroline Lumsden has been mastering distance teaching for the past week or so. And she's also been keeping villagers' spirits up in Frampton by playing in her garden studio.

"It seems that despite the most unprecedented crisis of our time, the academy will find a way of continuing the amazing work it has been doing for music for the past 40 years.

"This is the shape of things to come - at least for now."