The village hall is situated in the geographic centre of the village, halfway between Chapel End and Church End. It is now what was the Church of England maintained school for the village, closed in 1936/7 due to a falling roll of attendees. The school had been built in two phases, initially as, more-or-less, an extension in about 1800 to what is now known as The School House, and then almost doubled in size in around 1900.
When the Parish Council bought it off the Church in 1990 the building had been closed as unsafe due to structural faults. Local fundraising enabled considerable rebuilding in 1990/91. The internal facilities were completely reworked in 2000 thanks in the main to lottery funding.
The main hall will comfortably seat up to 50 for a talk, or 40 for a meal. There is a well equipped kitchen, toilets, central heating and is fully accessible to the disabled. As such it serves as the polling station for the parish. The grassed grounds to the east side of the building can accommodate marquees so that bar-b-ques for 90+ attendees have been comfortably held.
One condition of the sale of the school to the Parish Council was that the Church insisted upon the creation of a Village Hall Management Committee (VHMC), tasked with managing the use of the hall and generating the funds necessary to maintain it. The VHMC consists of 8 elected/volunteer members plus a nominee from the Church and one from the Parish Council.
The VHMC organises events themselves, such as Spring plant sales or second-hand book sales, talks, a quiz, concerts etc and also let out the hall to other organisations/individuals who use the space to run classes in yoga, equipilates, line dancing etc. or one-off events such as wedding receptions.
The surplus from these events pays for the heating, insurance and other day-to-day expenses and enables the VHMC to put away funds for larger less frequent expenses. A full set of accounts is produced and copied to both the Parish Council and the Church. It may also be found on this website.
Meetings of the VHMC are open to the public, who are most welcome to attend and to speak, and agendas, minutes, membership listings etc are all found on this website too.
