6 November 2014
Last updated at 09:38

St Michael’s Church in Othery won the King of Prussia Gold Medal for its “innovative, high quality” conservation work

Conservation work on a Grade I-listed church in Somerset has won a national award for architecture.

St Michael’s Church in Othery was awarded the King of Prussia Gold Medal at a Westminster Cathedral in London.

It recognised the church’s “innovative, high quality” repairs, carried out by Wells-based architects Beech Tyldesley.

The gold medal was the gift of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia in 1857, who was highly impressed with British Victorian church architecture.

Mark Taylor, director of Beech Tyldesley, said winning the King of Prussia Gold Medal was “quite frankly an amazing turn of events”.

Work included the repair and conservation of walls, buttresses, tower statues and niches.

Judges in the competition, organised by the National Churches Trust, said St Michael’s had an “impressive 15th Century perpendicular tower”.

A project to reinstate the tiled dome at the Grade II-listed church of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs and St Ignatius, Chideock, Dorset, was highly commended by the judges.