REPAIRS to a churchyard wall have been brought forward two years after it started leaning towards the road.

There are concerns about the safety of the wall at St John's Church which fronts onto the pavement on Beachley Road.

The church was built in 1833 and closed in the mid-1990s with Tidenham parish council taking over responsibility for the churchyard.

The council agreed to spend £4,960 in the current year from reserves to make the wall safe. Routine maintenance of the wall was due to have taken place in 2014-15.

Parish clerk Jan Cordon said the wall started to move following recent heavy rain and moved again in the last week.

She told the council: "If it fell it would fall into the road, not into the churchyard.

"If you leave it until 2014 you might be picking up pieces of stone from the road.

"If it fell on somebody there would be an insurance claim and you would be on dodgy ground if you had not done anything about it."

The cost of repairs has been increased because traditional building techniques have to be used on the Grade II listed structure.

Councillor Bernard Bowshall said: "The wall will have to be put right in the way it was originally built using special materials. You can't use cement."