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Ilminster, Somerset

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Village Hall Opening Day - August 2009

A villager's View - by the "late" Gladys Althrop.

It’s all behind us now, five years of fundraising, planning, hoping, disappointment, jubilation, laughter and some tears of joy. Here in our village we do it our way - ‘Horton Style’. A village, where no matter who you are, where you came from or what minority you happen to fit into, you are very welcome and have an equal right to your opinion and can live in peace and harmony with your fellow human beings.

The old Victory hall lies silent now, having new ownership and to be rejuvenated as a family residence. No more bursting at the seams to accommodate the Ding Gardening Club, the Whist Drives, Bingo, 50/50 auctions or the legendary £400 jumble sale and great big book fairs. The dormant kitchen where hundreds of breakfasts, luncheons, cream teas and refreshments were produced, now remain silent - no hum of a fridge no whirr of extractor fan!

This ancient building used to reverberate to riotous laughter on nights of Poems and Puds, Turkey and Tinsel, Ding Delta Discs plus nights for Trafalgar, Robbie Burns, not forgetting the Irish and, of course, St. George. Here the ‘Fryday Fryer’ catered at the ‘Chipnite Café’ and at other times curry was on the menu - and down shirt fronts!

What was it all in aid of? Only just about the greatest new building to be erected in Horton for a hundred years!
We sent out thousands of flyers, printed hundreds of posters and used four times as many drawing pins to hold them in place. 27 issues of the New Hall Newsletter were edited and 12,000 copies delivered. Did anyone keep a tally of all the raffle tickets sold? No, but for sure our intrepid Treasurer could work it out. We paid for the site, as we did the long pavement extension, whilst the first sods were cut by just about anyone who could handle a spade and as the new building began to defy gravity. We held open days there for all to check on the progress and cash came from far and wide in varying sized bundles, from gift aided donations to interest free loans, the generosity was spirit lifting.

Finally came the opening, a day to be proud, to laugh, to cry, to congratulate each other as we all did the necessary and cut the 75metre white ribbon, which was printed 300 times with the aptly chosen words:
  ‘HORTON VILLAGE HALL together we made it happen, 2009’.
Our good friend the Ilminster Town Crier led the countdown, not a speech was made but we all took a snip and gave a big cheer. Days like that are not easily forgotten and our slogan could be no more fitting as we proudly remember ...
 "together we made it happen"

We applied for the grants, to all great and small,
Some came up trumps, though the great, b****r all.
The district did us proud and gave good advice,
Yet the Big Lottery was small, non existent, not nice!

What function the tiny hall could not offer space for, was planned there, as countless committee meetings mulled over outside events, encouraged occasionally by a glass or two of wine-induced enthusiasm. Best ideas often came from a bottle. This was the operation room, the nerve centre, the centre of our universe, where at times many of us seemingly lived our lives, as Flower Shows, Parties in the Park, Partly in the Dark, Function at the Junction, Spring balls, Bonus balls and golf balls for the village ‘International Open Tournament’ were honed to fruition.