Following in the footsteps of the mystery donor, The Telegraph has found at least eight churches that have received bullion amounting to more than £70,000 in total – offering beleaguered rural parishes a financial lifeline.

“It is a wonderful thing whoever has done this,” Nick Gillibrand, a fellow churchwarden at St John’s, said, adding that the find would kickstart fundraising to repair the Grade-I listed building’s medieval Flemish stained glass windows.

“They are in bad condition, it is going to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds,” the 77-year-old retired architect said, adding that the coins had galvanised the parish to push on with its campaign.

A painting which has hung in a small Lancashire church for two centuries has been revealed as a lost masterpiece worth more than £100,000.