GENEROUS churchgoers from Nailsea have raised a staggering £229,000 in just two weeks to complete their church building project.

Holy Trinity and Trendlewood churches held a gift day at the end of January with the hope of raising enough to transform the old church hall in Church Lane into a community café.

The final phase of the project will also include building a new entrance lobby linking the three buildings at Holy Trinity.

The church bought the Old Rectory in 2010 and turned it into Trinity House with offices, meeting rooms, two flats and a youth area.

Members are now hoping work can start on the final phase so the new Trinity Centre will be up and running by the end of the year.

Reverend Steve Tilley said: “We’ve been doing the project for a number of years and we hoped that a gift day would raise the necessary money to finish it off.

“The last bit of the jigsaw is the old hall next to the church which needs complete modernisation. We are incredibly excited about the amount we raised, it’s brilliant, and we’ve still got money coming in for the appeal.

“It’s very generous and for some people it will have been sacrificially generous - they will have given something up to donate to the project.

“We have some money left from a previous gift day and we have some promises of loans which don’t have to be paid back for 10 years so it looks as if we can tell the builders to carry on to completion.”

The money was donated by 350 members of the two churches and will pay for the modernisation of the old hall next to the church, which was built in 1985.

The hall wwill be renamed the Trinity Centre and an entrance lobby will also be built linking the new community centre with Trinity Church and Trinity House, in Church Lane.

Members want the whole community to benefit from the new developments and hope the area will become a social hub along with the nearby Tithe Barn.