THE wall of a 900-year-old parish church has been fixed following a community campaign to raise �20,000.

St John the Baptist Church in Woodhurst faced a race against time to repair the crumbling masonry in order to stop further damage to the building. With the wedding of its treasurer Neil Farbon, to Annabel Armstrong also fast approaching, churchgoers embarked on a fundraising campaign by appealing to charities and public bodies for grants to cover the repair costs.

The wall has now been restored to its former glory after grants from the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Cambridgeshire Historic Churches Trust and the Allchurches Trust. It also got a donation from Huntingdonshire District Council because it was a Listed Building which was on English Heritage’s Buildings at Risk Register.

Shirley Firth, secretary of the church’s parish council, said: “We are delighted the wall has been repaired. We appealed to public bodies and the public at large to help and got scaffolding up quite quickly, because if there was more rain it would have got into the church and the worse the situation would have been.

“It was just so nice that so many people helped. We got money from people all over the village and they were very generous.

“The inside of the church also needs decorating and hopefully we have raised enough money to have that done as well.”