Our village hall needs your help. Unless it gets help we may lose it altogether.
The village hall is owned a charitable trust with strong church connections. The trust leases it to the Parish Council. It is run by a management committee (another registered charity), which includes representatives of village organisations and other people who are interested.
Many people do not use the hall often. But when they do need it they find it invaluable. Tens of thousands of pounds have been raised there at charity events from jumble sales to dinners and it has been the venue for birthday, wedding and funeral parties, theatrical and musical performances, school events, lectures, elections and parish meetings.
Stuart Bevan has been chair of the management committee for fourteen years. Recently he has been working towards building a new village hall as part of the Longparish Community Project which also includes replacing the temporary classrooms at the school and the playgroup portacabin.
As explained in the last Hill and Valley, there is a strong possibility now that the school will get a grant to meet a significant proportion of the required funding for a school hall as well as its new classrooms. This development has meant that the school and playgroup can now go ahead with their joint project, which will hopefully incorporate the facilities required by the church too. The funding authority imposes no restriction on the use of the hall by the community. The governors are happy with such use but acknowledge that it will probably not be able to meet all of the community's needs. If funds are made available to the school, as the Diocese is confident they will be, building would start in late 2003. So we still need a village hall in the interim and only time will tell whether a separate hall will be required in addition to the facility available at the school.
Stuart and some of the older members of the management committee have decided to retire. We owe them a huge thank you for all they have done over the years. Now we need a new generation of people to run the hall while we think through the options and decide what to do.
The new chairman will leading the group which runs the hall and will decide its future, a decision which will affect the village for decades to come. This is an interesting role with both practical and intellectual aspects. The job falls into three main parts.
Stuart has done all of them in the past but they could be split between different people jobs and each could be shared by more than one person. They are:
One possibility to help with the first job would be to employ a caretaker as happens at Hurstbourne Priors.
Please can you help with any of these jobs? None of them is onerous and if you do them you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping our community. Perhaps you are recently retired and could do the whole job. Or you may be able to spare an hour or so a week and do part of it. If you can offer help or you'd like to find out more about what would be involved please contact Gloria Goodliffe (tel. 720425) who is the Parish Council representative on the village hall committee, Sarah Harris (tel. 720437), secretary of the management committee, or Jeremy Barber (tel. 720459) chair of the Parish Council.
It is a sad fact that if volunteers do not come forward to run the hall then the Parish Council may have to close it and we could lose a valuable facility forever.
On April 18th fifteen members met in the village hall to see a slide show by Mr Gregory on Pub Signs in Hampshire. The talk proved popular. Pub signs are an art form that is uniquely British and one that is frequently overlooked. The talk opened our eyes to the diversity of signs. Some signs even have a different subject on each side. Even the method of hanging the inn signs varies with the brewery. Mr Gregory told us of a society that interests itself in the style of pub signs and their artists.
In June there will be no formal meeting. Our members will be going to see a production of Die Fledermaus presented by the Winchester Operatic Society at the Theatre Royal Winchester on Thursday 27th June.