THE WORK at St George’s church in Modbury will be finished in time for Christmas following seven months of extensive restoration.

The Raising the Roof project has seen the church re-roofed and the tower re-pointed. The work on the roof will hopefully be completed by the end of the month and the tower finished in mid-December.

The £540,000 project began with a grant application being submitted two years ago. And following extensive fundraising by the church and local community, the work began in June this year.

Alex Hammerstein, church warden and project co-ordinator said: ‘We were fortunate to receive a £250,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund along with various other small grants. The church and community raised the best part of £100,000 which was absolutely fabulous.’

Once the re-roofing and re-pointing are complete, the third and final phase of the church’s transformation and restoration will begin.

Mr Hammerstein explained: ‘Because the roof has been leaking for so long, there is significant water damage in the church. So we’re now going to have repair the damage to the church, and install a new heating and lighting system.

‘The church is the biggest building in Modbury and we’d like to make it more community centric. Our plan is to reorder the church inside, which might include underfloor heating and the removal of the pews. It could then be left as an open space and kept as a flexible space for use by the community.

‘The final phase will see the church being a made a warm, welcoming building for the community,’ Mr Hammerstein added.

The plans for the re-ordering of the church will be discussed at next week’s Parochial Church Council meeting. If no objections are raised, the plan is to ask the Modbury community how they would like to make best use of the building.

Once agreed, there will be a new round of grant applications in June 2017, with a view to beginning work on re-ordering in 2018.

‘The support from the community has been so generous and that was partly what motivated the Heritage Lottery Fund to provide such a generous grant.

‘It’s extraordinary, we had £70,000 in the kitty in mid-2014 and we are now finishing a £540,000 project,’ Mr Hammerstein added.

Watch the latest drone flyover of St George’s below, courtesy of Alex Hammerstein.