A MALVERN woman had the chance to mix with the Royal Family, Tony Blair and other celebrities in the garden of Buckingham Palace.

Angela Blundell visited the Palace as part of the Community Service Awards for her work in renovating the churchyard at St Matthias in Malvern Link.

"It was a lovely day," said Mrs Blundell, of Somers Park Avenue.

"I wasn't presented to the Queen but I was very close to her. She was wearing a lovely lemon dress with green sprigs on it."

Mrs Blundell said Pop Idol runner-up Gareth Gates, who was sitting a few rows away from her, was picked out to be presented to the Queen.

Since 1998, Mrs Blundell has been working with husband Douglas, friends Peter and Jane Edwards and other volunteers to transform the churchyard.

The group has been digging, landscaping, removing rubbish, cleaning up and removing tree roots around the graves and monuments.

Mrs Blundell, aged 51, said the next stage of the project was to mount a 600-year-old historic toll stone, called the Link Stone, on a nearby pedestal in the churchyard.

People who wanted to move coffins from one side of Malvern to the other used to drop a toll into the stone.

"It's one of Malvern's oldest bits of history," she said. "I believe it was at the junction of Worcester Road and Pickersleigh Road."