YEARS of planning and hard work will pay off with the opening of the £100,000 Millennium Room in Colwall.

Vicar Carl Attwood will officially open the building tomorrow (Saturday), which will house Internet-ready computers, a village archive and other community facilities.

Parish council chairman Nicky Carless, one of the trustees of the scheme, said it was gratifying to see the project come together.

"It makes me feel very proud of the community," she said. "It's been a super project and everyone has pulled together.

"To have been part of this idea right from the beginning and to see it progress from an idea into a building has been quite exciting."

Mrs Carless said that anyone was welcome to attended the opening ceremony at 11am and to look around the new Millennium Room.

The project was born in 1999, after a survey identified it as the most popular idea among villagers for celebrating the Millennium.

Fundraising activities that have helped pay for the scheme have included a balloon race, Christmas postal service and the sale of a photograph of villagers taken outside the church of St James the Great.

Money has been provided through grants and Herefordshire Council, as well as Colwall Historical Society, which provided one of the computers and will administer the local history archive.

A swipe card system that will allow residents 24-hour access to the Millennium room, which adjoins the Humphry Walwyn Memorial Library, is currently being developed.

Colwall was one of the first parishes in the country to set up its own library at the end of the 19th Century. Its current building was opened in 1956, built by the Walwyn Educational Foundation, which itself was set up in the 1600s for the betterment of the people of Colwall.