A 90-year-old former RAF driver has helped save St Mary’s Church in Market Weston, Suffolk, by raising nearly £30,061 through baking and selling sausage rolls and malt loaf.

Gerry Smith, who took up baking at 80 after the passing of his wife, Pamela, a longtime churchwarden, contributed nearly a third of the £100,113 needed to restore the church’s collapsing windows.

Other donors included the Alfred Williams Charitable Trust and the Suffolk Historic Churches Trust.

“The church means everything to me,” Smith told the East Anglian Daily Times. 

"I can't tell you my secret recipes, but what I can tell you is that people absolutely love my baking and it brings me a lot of joy."

St Mary’s churchwarden, Richard Chatham, praised Smith’s dedication, saying he "enjoys the adventure of life" and "wants to give back to the community".

Chatham added that "generosity of spirit" had kept the church alive.