UGBOROUGH is gearing up for its first Flower Festival for many years, part of a £70,000 fundraising campaign to pay for vital repairs to the church bells.

The three-day event is being organised by villagers to begin on Friday, May 20, when the doors of the large church will be flung wide at 10am to reveal more than 35 colourful arrangements.

The theme is ’a calendar of festivals and celebrations’, with each arrangement being a take on occasions such as Easter, Christmas, and St George’s Day, as well as Wimbledon, the Queen’s 90th birthday and much more. Organisers are promising a riot of colour, as well as ploughman’s lunches and cream teas available in the church over the three days.

The church will be open from 10am to 6pm on Friday and Saturday, May 21, and from noon to 6pm on Sunday, May 22, for anyone to pop in and enjoy the display. The official opening of the festival will also take place at 6pm on the Friday, with plenty of entertainment, street food and refreshments.

Ugborough’s Flower Festival is being sponsored by Bandvulc, Grey Matter, South Brent Flowers, Ugborough Garages, Higher Well Farm and The Ship Inn, Ugborough.

After an 11-inch crack appeared in number six bell early last year, an inspection of the historic church’s eight bells and associated equipment found a major restoration was needed.

The bells in the unusually large village church – often referred to as the cathedral of the South Hams – were last rehung in 1911, when the supporting wooden frame was replaced with a cast iron one. Since then, no major work has been carried out, even though the bells themselves date from between 1762 and 1931.

The cost of the work is expected to be around £70,000, which villagers are determined to raise in order to continue the historic practice of bellringing, which has been part of Ugborough life since at least the middle of the sixteenth century.