CHURCHGOERS in Corsham have a reason to celebrate after their old church hall windows were replaced thanks to a grant from Hills Waste.

A plaque signifying the grant, which was made available through the Landfills Communities Fund administered for Hills by Community First and put towards eight new double glazed windows, was presented to the delighted St Aldhelm's Church committee on Monday, April 3 after a quinquennial check ruled that the windows had to be repaired.

"We had our quinquennial check a while ago and they recommended that we strip down the windows in the hall and repaint them and we thought it would just be easier if we took a chance and put new windows in," church secretary Cynthia Carter explained. "We were quite lucky as Community First gave us £5,000 out of the £10,000 we needed and that gave us a kick start. We could have got there in the end but with their help, we got there much quicker."

After the decision was made to replace the eight windows of the church hall, based in Pickwick Road, in November, members of the congregation raised more than £3,000 towards the cause through fundraising and a gift day, which helped plug the funding gap.

"We were absolutely delighted with the money we received," Mrs Carter added. "It was quite amazing though because by the time we added everything up, we had a gap of about £2,600 and a letter came the next day from the United Reformed Church saying we could have a loan for that exact amount of money."

Community groups and organisations such as Age UK and Corsham's Food Bank use the church hall to centre their operations and the hall's busy schedule played a big part in securing funding.

"Lots of different groups use our hall from toddlers groups to Kings Rise Children Group use the hall on a regular basis, which definitely played a part in getting the money. We thought we would rather spend the money on getting new windows rather than repairing the old and a big advantage to this was the environmental advantages. As the frames are no longer iron, we are already noticing the difference in heat retention already."