The lights of a Powys church are shining bright once again after a spring cleaning session carried out by a team of volunteers.

Friends of St Myllin’s Church, near Llanfyllin, recently spent a morning cleaning and clearing the grounds of the church ahead of an upcoming revamp.

For several years, a team of volunteers have devoted a morning in the spring to carry out some maintenance work for St Myllin’s, gathering again this year on April 6 to prepare the churchyard for a busy summer.

Organised by friends of St Myllin’s, each year the group takes on a different project related to the church that has not received attention for many years.

This year, the group picked the church’s street lights as an area to focus on, hoping to solve the problem of the light on the path from the gate no longer providing any illumination.

Volunteer Andy Green opened up the lantern and cleaned out years of grime to give the lamp a new lease of life.

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Speaking on the state of the churchyard and garden, Friends of St Myllin’s chairman Keith Blacker added: “After the raking and brushing, clearing the front of house flower borders and clearing various edges and levels, the churchyard now looks good and feels cared for.

“The churchyard is full of interest - botanical, historical, aesthetic - but it is so under-used, presumably because people think of it as a churchyard attached to a church.

“People do like visiting gardens though, they lift the spirits, and it would be good if we could persuade people to think of the churchyard as a large and interesting garden, The Church Garden, where they could wander around, have picnics and play games.”

The clean up comes ahead of s busy summer for the church, as it was announced in March that St Myllin’s will be getting a £53,000 revamp to improve access to the historic Powys church for wheelchair users, something the church’s friends group have been campaigning over for several years now.

The Welsh Government funding, together with grants from The Friends of St Myllin’s, The Church in Wales, Church Field Trust Buckley, The Benefact Trust, Llanfyllin Town Council and local donations, has enabled the Church to raise the necessary funds.

Work is set to begin soon, with the aim of completing the improvements in time for the Llanfyllin Music Festival by Sunday, July 7.