AN empty bottle drive is raising much needed funds to finish a church hall in Sutton.

The hall, funded by the St Peter’s Anglican Church parish, sits alongside the village’s 150-year-old church and also includes a new toilet block.

When staff at The Sutton Bakery, next door to the church, heard that a little more cash was needed to complete the hall, they decided to pitch in.

“The young staff are really keen on recycling so they are collecting the bottles and cans to help raise money to finish lining the hall,” Archdeacon Royce Thompson from St Peter’s Anglican Church says.

So far the humble yet helpful bottle drive has raised $270 with 2700 cans and bottles collected.

“Others in the community are helping too, it’s fantastic,” Mr Thompson says.

“What we are now trying to do is get a number that people can use when they drop their bottles off for recycling in Mitchell, so that the money from that goes straight to this cause.”

Navigating Yass Valley council regulations around the installation of new toilets, meant that funds – raised by the church community – to complete the hall had dried up, he says.

“What we got caught with was we’ve had to put in three commercial grade toilets, so that has taken up a huge amount of the money we raised,” he says.

“The toilets are almost ready to open but we’ve had to find funds to finish off the lining of the hall because it all went into the toilets.”

Mr Thompson, a retired Airforce chief captain, says the quaint church has a rich history.

The original church, he says, was dragged on blocks from a nearby mine field to its present site 150 years ago.

“That church burned down,” he says.

“So this is the second church but it was the original church helped Sutton be gazetted as a village.”

The “reasonable” sized church congregation has weathered the storms of covid, and will keep doing so Mr Thomposon says, but admitted the last 18 months had been tough.

“It was hard,” he says.

“We did services via zoom, but you can’t use prayer books or hymn books and I’ve had to reduce the chairs, it’s been an adjustment.”

St Peter’s Anglican Church also has a campus in nearby Wamboin.

Empty bottles and cans can be dropped off inside the St Peter’s Anglican church yard on Camp Street, Sutton.