A ROAD has fully re-opened eight months after part of a church retaining wall collapsed.

The wall collapsed outside St Kenelm's Church in Upton Snodsbury near Worcester on January 30 on the B4082, with the road shut on one side since for safety reasons.

This was to ensure that the rest of the wall, which was built in the late 1700s, would not collapse.

Jeffrey Smith, church council member and fabric officer said that it took a while to obtain permission to carry out the work.

The road fully re-opened last week.

Mr Smith said: "We are a lot further forward than I thought we would be at this stage.

"As the wall is grade two listed and it is in a conservation area, it took a long time to get all the permissions in place to do anything to the wall, we had to wait until July to start the work.

"We had to get a company to shape the wall back to ensure that any more of the wall did not collapse by seeing if it was moving outwards. We have not seen any movement outwards since and we have put ground anchors in to stop this happening.

"It had to comply with planning and church regulations, which also meant it took a long time, the actual work only took two days but it was all the pre-planning work which took a long time.

"We are hoping that the wall can be rebuilt fully by Christmas where it has collapsed, but we cannot be sure of that, as we have not got a full assessment of how much it will cost at the moment.

"We are expecting it to cost about £90,000.

We are very grateful for the support we have had. The Friends of the Church group has raised money through church events and we have had plenty of donations.

"Soon after the wall collapsed one donor gave us £1,000 who lived a long way from the parish, after seeing the photographs in the newspaper.

"The wall is only three metres from the outside of the church, and we want to rebuild the wall to modern standards. I do not think they would have allowed this wall to be build so close to the church today."

"It has gone better than expected, it has still been very tough, but we are very grateful to all the charities, donators and people who have supported our fundraisers."

The charity, Friends of St Kenelm's Upton Snodsbury, are organising a medieval banquet on Saturday October 14 when Trevor Harrison who plays Eddie Grundy in The Archers will be attending.

Contact 01905 381511 for details and tickets.