Mary Berry’s visit to Bath feels ‘like coming home’, she says

The cookery writer and broadcaster Dame Mary Berry says returning to the area she grew up in “is like coming home”.

The TV personality is in Bath to take part in an event at St Stephen’s Church, on Lansdown, with the aim of securing funding for structural repairs and modernisation to the building.

The occasion has been organised by the Beacon of Lansdown project, set-up to secure the future of the church, which is set to cost millions.

It’s “very important that churches become up-to-date”, said Dame Mary, who was born in Bath in 1935.

Dame Mary grew up in Chalcombe, where she remembers living “up the hill” from St Stephens Church.

She lived with her parents and two brothers, growing up “making dens” and playing in the garden, she said.

“It was a very happy childhood,” said Dame Mary, adding: “We had goats for their milk and my mother used to preserve eggs because we had hens.”

A keen horse rider, she would often ride her pony across Lansdown with her father.

When she was 13 years old Dame Mary contracted polio and was treated at the Royal United Hospital in Bath for a number of weeks.

She remembers there being “quite an epidemic” at the hospital.

“One day my father brought my pony to see me,” she recalls.

“I can tell you from that day I got better.”

As part of the event at St Stephen’s Church, Dame Mary answered a Q&A on her latest cookery book, Mary at 90, and signed copies of it.