WHEN Roy Haviland stepped down after 30 years of service to a Lydney charity, colleagues marked the occasion with a special gift.

Mr Haviland was chairman of the Lydney Grammar School Foundation which promotes education with grants to young people and adults.

Although Mr Haviland has been heavily involved with the foundation since the mid-1980s, he was never actually a pupil at the school.

He said: “I was a parent governor at Whitecross School and that is how I got involved with the foundation.”

Other volunteers decided that his years of service deserved recognition and so enlisted the help of his wife Doreen to choose something suitable.

Mr Haviland is a keen gardener and is developing the garden at his new home in Kimberley Drive, Lydney and so they bought an acer tree and a plaque.

Mr Haviland said: “I thought my wife was being very generous in buying the acer.”

The new Chair of the foundation, Helen Brooks, said: “We wanted to mark Roy’s years of service so we had a chat with Doreen and she knew exactly what he wanted.”

For more information about the foundation and grants available e-mail the clerk, Ron Beddis, at [email protected].