AN abbey has been given 15 valuable presents for Christmas.

Anonymous donors have sponsored 15 large organ pipes now being made in Italy for Pershore Abbey’s new organ.

The good news was announced by Abbey team-member, the Revd Alma Organ in time for the festive season. “In a year or two, we will hear these pipes playing joyful Christmas carols throughout our beautiful building,” she said.

The pipe sponsorship is part of the Pipe Dreams campaign, featured in the Evesham Journal in November.

Pershore Abbey was an Anglo-Saxon abbey and is now an Anglican parish church. It is all that remains of the abbey that was destroyed shortly after 1539 during the Protestant Reformation.

It was one of the final monasteries to be dissolved by King Henry VIII

The new pipe organ for Pershore Abbey is being hand-crafted by the Fratelli Ruffatti company in Padua, Italy. One of their instruments is installed at Buckfast Abbey and will be heard on BBC TV for the mid-night mass on Christmas Eve.