“The village hall! That abiding icon of conviviality and the volunteering ethic; of community; a physical, if usually humble, focus of much of the traditional, unofficial life of a village and its hinterland� (Ray, 2003)
Each village hall hosts an average of nine life events, such as weddings, christening parties or wakes each year -a grand total of 90,000 gatherings.
Top; Entrants for a dog show held in the Methodist Chapel Hall, with their awards. Lostwithiel Methodist Chapel Hall, 1980s ____ Bottom; Dog Obedience Class, Tregony Village Hall
National Council of Social Service (NCSS), model rules for village halls. 1949
Pendennis Brass Band Practice ___
Mawnan Village Hall
Top; Kids Lazer Tag Party, St. Columb Minor Village Hall __ Bottom; Circus Berzerkus, Coverack Centre
Wine Tasting Club ___ Liskerrett Community Centre
Visually Impaired Bowls Club ___ Gweek Village Hall
Christmas Pantomime Rehearsals ___ Fraddon Village Hall
Village halls rely on more than 12 million hours of volunteering each year to deliver their vital role at the heart of rural communities.
Slot Car Racing ___ Praa Sands Village Hall
Indoor Helicopter Flying Club ___ Angarrack Community Centre
Top; Exterior of Flushing Village Club ___ Bottom; History of St.Breward book launch, St.Breward Memorial Hall
Left; Orginal archtitectual drawings of Lanner Village Hall. ___ Right; Table top fair, Lanner Village Hall
Society of Recorder Players ___ Carnon Downs Village Hall
During the years, Lanner Village Hall has gone through a variety of transformations. Starting off as the Lanner Hill Bible Christian Chapel in 1817, being built by followers of John Boyle. The Chapel then went through 3 rebuilds between the time of opening and 1866. In 1904 the schoolroom was added along with heating, a furnace house, a chamber for apparatus an d two earth closets at a cost of £400. During the war in 1949-45 it was closed by the Methodist Connection and later commandeered by the Ministry of Food. The gallery was used as a store and collection depot for egg boxes and the Sunday School room was used as a school for Roman Catholic evacuees and a drill hall headquarters for the local Home Guard. The Village Hall was born in 1946 when 30 villagers contributed £10 each to buy the chapel for £301 13s 9d. A suspended ceiling was installed to seal off the gallery, the wall dividing the chapel from the schoolroom was demolished and a new stage added. The first production by the newly-formed Lanner Amateur Dramatic Society was performed in the Village Hall. Jump forward to 2008 the hall was awarded £250,000 by The Big Lottery with additional support pledged by other agencies to refurbish and internally remodel the hall including disabled access to all areas. The kitchen and toilets relocated and improved. An extension of the first floor into a previously unused space creating two rooms, one of which will be the permanent meeting room for the Lanner Parish Council. A new roof and reinstated windows, which have been boarded up for a number of years, will greatly improve the external appearance of the building. From Darby and Joan to Miss Lanner, Judo to Gymnastics, Girl Guides to Carnival Queens, Snooker to Bingo and Brass Bands to Rock ‘n’ Roll this hall has been supported and enjoyed by a myriad of people and will continue to be so.
Top & Bottom Left; Archive Images of Lanner Village Hall ___ Bottom Right; Majorettes, Lanner Village Hall
Opening of the new Gweek Village Hall _____ Photo, Paul Yockney
Slot Car Racing ___ Lostwithiel Community Centre
Around 1,000 village halls, or 10%, host a community enterprise such as post office, community shop, coffee shop, library, cinema or farmers’ market. However, almost a quarter of all halls don’t derive any financial benefit from this activity.
Top; Fraddon Village Hall ___ Bottom; Dog Obedence Class, Tregony Village Hall
English Rural Life: Village Activities, Organizations and Institutions _____ H. E. Bracey, 1998
Before World War I, most of the few village halls then in existence owed their erection to donations from wealthy local residents. During the early ‘twenties, however, a great number of villages acquired village halls in a variety of ways. Ex-Army Red Triangle Federation of Village Clubs was sponsored by the Young Men’s Christian Association in 1918. This became the Village Clubs’ Association and by 1921 Oxfordshire contained a sufficient number to warrant a county association. Eventually, the National Council of Social Service, with financial backing from the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees, took over responsibility for stimulating interest in and assisting people to build village halls. This service has been maintained until the present day. The dimensions, equipment and decoration of a village hall will vary according to the needs, aspirations and, above all, the financial resources of the village people. Today, the cost of a new building may be anything from £ 2,000– £ 10,000 and £ 3,000 or £ 4,000 is a common figure. Grants are obtainable from the Ministry of Education for new buildings or adaptations and from county councils for equipment. Supplementary grants are also made by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. Jacqueline Tyrrwhitt sets out the requirements of a village hall as follows:(a) hall, complete with stage and dressing room, to seat one-third of the population, (b) kitchen and a dinning room to seat one quarter of the population, (c) two or three smaller rooms for private gatherings- committee meetings, games and educational classes, (d) club rooms for boys and for girls which should include simple equipment. It could serve also as a nursery or play centre.
(e) library room, (f) council chamber or meeting room for the parish council. In practice, village halls occur in all shapes and sizes, if varying quality and type of construction and are put to many diverse uses. Some begin life as a tithe barn and others as the vicars coach house. Indeed, in many villages, the fact that there is a Church room, parish room, or reading room is due almost entirely to the efforts of a local incumbent. A Women’s Institute enquiry found that the community owned halls built between the two World Wars were, as a rule, well constructed but older-type halls, even if soundly build tended to be sparsely finished and unimaginatively equipped. Most of the older halls and huts are draughty, imperfectly lighted, poorly heated, badly decorated and generally ‘down at heels’ in appearance. Absence of running water and poor lighting was a common complaint from the more-remote villages. I have heard it said, with some truth, that some villages halls have the sole merit, albeit a very important one, of standing on a neutral ground. A very few village halls have central heating, more have efficient slow combustion stoves and a great number rely on convector oil heaters. Heating is one of the major ‘headaches’ of a village hall committee because to do the job effectively swallows up an awful lot of money. If they are too careful they will incur the wrath of the hirers and the users—from the county council to the youngest teenager in the village youth club. Almost a third of the 6,747 villages completing the Women’s Institute questionnaire were shown to be without any kind of village hall.
But many thousands did not make a return and the proportion is probably very much higher than one third. Most parishes (as distinct from villages) have some kind of meeting place, even if they have no village or parish hall; I found that this was the case for approximately ninety per cent of all parishes in the county of Somerset, neglecting the Church, chapel and the school if used for day-school instruction. Ninety per cent of all huts were administered by the parish or trustees representing either the Church or general village interests. The halls erected by the Women’s Institute and the British Legion are noteworthy since they have all been erected in the last twenty years or so to fill gaps in the local provision of places of assembly. The large group of miscellaneous halls included some whose use was restricted (originally) to particular sections of the community. Ten were known as ‘Miners’ Institute’, ‘Miners’ Welfare Hall’ etc. Private ownership accounted for a few. Business establishments provided some villages with meeting places, two had the use of local holiday-camp premises for winter functions, whilst a third used a room in a local factory. Numerous halls and large rooms belonging to hotels and public houses are known variously as the ‘Assembly Rooms’, the ‘Agricultural Hall’ or more simple the ‘Hotel Room’. In some villages this is the only secular meeting place available. In many it is the most convenient because the village hut, perhaps a legacy of World War I, is used most evenings by various youth organisations, is badly sited, heated or lighted, or is structurally unsuitable.