ST Mary’s Church in Chard celebrated raising £125,000 to repair its roof at the weekend.

A mammoth fundraising effort has been ongoing for about eight years and the Forton Road fixture has finally smashed its target.

Members of the church and fellow fundraisers marked the occasion with a special Raise the Roof event on Saturday evening with music, dancing, food and an awards ceremony.

The Rev Sue Tucker said: “The evening was an opportunity to thank everyone who has helped to mend St Mary’s leaky lead roof.

“It was a Sunday morning eight years ago when the rain began to trickle through the ceiling of the church and onto the heads of a number of people who were trying to pray.

“The hole was patched up but investigations showed that the roof had a major problem with corrosion.

“From that time, poor old St Mary’s suffered the indignity of being poked and prodded, examined by all and sundry, fitted with radio equipment and climbed all over.

“The conclusion of all the investigation was that the south side of the church needed repairing urgently and it was going to cost £125,000.

“We launched the appeal and thanks to Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Churches Trust, Somerset Churches Trust and Chard Town Council we raised the money.

“It took two months to repair and although some parts of the roof were worse than expected, the wretched under lead corrosion hadn’t spread.

“So thank you to everyone who has run, danced, cooked, given money, eaten cake rung bells, climbed the tower and prayed. We wanted to have fun while we raised the money and I think we did.”