WORK to repair a church’s roof is finally underway after it was awarded more than £45,000 in grant money.

Scaffolding at St Mary’s Parish Church, Barnard Castle, went up last week and workmen are on site at the 12th Century building.

Church treasurer, Robert Stenlake, said plans to fix the roof had been ongoing since an inspection in 2014 revealed 150 actions that needed completing.

However, due to a lack of funding, the Newgate church was faced with a massive task to find the money needed to complete the jobs which ranged from everything from repairing the roof to polishing the pew ends.

But thanks to a £46,100 grant from the government’s Listed Places of Worship Roof Repair Scheme, the church were able to instruct contractors, Team-Force Restoration, who have now started working on the historic building.

They will repair and replace the tower roof as well as some other damaged parts of the roof including the old North Porch and the Vestry roof.

Alongside the roof works, some essential work to improve the drainage along the North side of the church between the main door and the vestry will also be completed where an outbreak of dry rot a few years ago previously caused problems.

Mr Stenlake said: “We put in an application in January 2105, more or less as they were closing it so we worked our socks off to get that in.”

The church was originally awarded £31,000 but encouraged to apply for more funding as the list of jobs grew and was surprised to find they’d been given more.

“Without that we would still be sitting here wondering how to go ahead,” Mr Stenlake added.

The project is supervised by the church architect, Chris Cotton of Purcells and is expected to take eight weeks to complete although the church will be open as usual every day while the works progress.

The project cost is £71,030 has been made possible the grant from the scheme as well as a grant of £1,000 from The Friends of St Mary’s.

Mr Stenlake said the church was very grateful for the financial support it had received.

Reverend, Alec Harding, added: “It has taken a fair time to get the necessary permissions for the work on the tower to go ahead so I’m delighted to see the contractors finally on site and really impressed by how quickly the work is progressing.”