A HERITAGE Lottery Fund grant of £156,400 to the parish church in Meeth will not only save the tower from falling down but will preserve the church bells and enable the installation of new facilities to benefit the whole community and visitors to the village.

The project will deliver the first public toilets in Meeth and a kitchen for community events once urgent conservation work to the tower and bells at St Michael and All Angels is complete.

Over the last few years in the region of £20,000 has been raised by local residents for various works on the church but at the end of 2014 a Heritage Lottery Grant was awarded to discover the cause of the water ingress to the tower and the means to restore the structural stability of the tower. It quickly became apparent that a large amount of funding would be needed to carry out the work.

Members of Meeth Parochial Church Council (PCC) are celebrating the news this week that the capital grant to the Heritage Lottery Fund has been successful.

Jenny Green from the PCC said: ‘We are absolutely thrilled — this money will enable us to safeguard the church for future generations. The project also aims to explore the fascinating history of the church.

‘We are going to miss the sound of the bells from April to October but without this work we would not have any bells. We have a really good team of bellringers and one of the things we would like to do when the work is complete is to get more children involved in bell ringing.’

Jenny said a trail was being developed for the church, which retains many of its Norman features, to explore its arts and treasures. Among the interesting features at St Michael and All Angels are a beautifully modelled plaster coat of arms dated 1704, a medieval roof composed of roof bosses with interesting faces and features and wooden angels, a Jacobean font cover and a plaque that the whole village contributed to for the 2000 millennium year.

Within the new plans are concerts and events which are currently restricted because of the lack of facilities. Churchwarden Ingrid Dodd said the church currently runs a club called the Messy Meeth Monkeys for toddlers and primary school children which would benefit greatly from a kitchen and toilets.

‘We tend to lose the young people a bit when they become teenagers but we want the church to be a friendly place where the young people can always come back to,’ she said. ‘That is our aim really, we don’t want it to be an intimidating place.

‘The church is very important in the community and the church is very proactive in organising things that happen from walks and fetes to the Queen 90th Birthday celebrations. We also issue a welcome leaflet to new residents of the village. We have raised in the region of £20,000 for the church ourselves which is a lot of cups of teas at 50p a go in a parish of 170-190 people.

‘By having a kitchen and toilets here it will be a blessing. We have had no hot water in the past so we have had to compromise quite a lot with making drinks and washing up. There are no public toilets in Meeth either so to have a facility here will be a bonus for people visiting the village as well as those visiting the church.’