FARNDALE CHURCH HOUSES VILLAGE HALL PROJECT

VILLAGE HALL PROJECT

The current village hall at Church Houses Farndale was originally a wartime army hut from Duncombe Park, Helmsley. Earl Feversham donated it to the dale in the early 1950's to serve as a village hall.

Farndale Church Houses Village Hall 1953

Over the years is has done sterling work for the dale hosting virtually every dale event including: Christmas parties, dances, domino drives, entertainments of all sorts, the annual Farndale show, harvest suppers, meetings of all Farndale organisations, music evenings, Parish Council meetings, WI meetings and many more. As well as being the local polling station.

Time has taken its toll on the building and when our Parish Plan survey was conducted in 2004 it was clear most residents thought major work was required. Various options were considered including possible conversion of nearby steading (which it became clear was unsuitable), complete refurbishment of the current hall was the preferred option until a structural survey exposed the full state of the problems and late in 2005 it became clear the existing building was beyond economic repair.

This was a major blow for a small community but the decision was made to start looking into feasibility of building a new hall on the old site. After discussion with the local planning authority it was clear they preferred a hall with a similar appearance to the old one as it is sited within the National Park. Sir Lawrence Barratt offered a strip of land to the rear of the existing hall to allow the community to build a slightly larger hall incorporating additional features which were identified from the Parish Plan Survey.

A local Architect, Fred Collin, was engaged to draw up plans and planning permission has been granted. Although some modifications are expected following further local consultations to validate that needs have been correctly identified. Barry Sunley is Project Managing the New Hall development on behalf of the Village Hall committee.

The new hall is planned to be a timber framed structure with a main hall of similar scale to the existing one, a small meeting room, a kitchen and cricket pavilion. The toilet block is planned to have secure access from the hall and external access to the general public.

Farndale Church Houses Village Hall 2007

It is also planned to include as may ecological features as viable to minimise running costs and provide a carbon neutral footprint.

As soon as it was clear a new building was the most appropriate way forward, work began immediately on fundraising starting with a Christmas quiz. Following on from this, during 2006, there have been domino drives, pub quizzes in both our local pubs - the Feversham arms and Lion Inn, teas in the band room at daffodil time, Music night, duck races and a produce auction and a major boost from a prize draw.

During 2005 two members of Kirkbymoorside Photographic club, Angela smith and Derek Pickering, had performed a year long photographic study of Farndale they presented their work in the Bandroom in March 2006 and kindly donated all entrance fees to Dale Organisations, ½ to the village hall but this spawned two further sources of funding: Angela produced a DVD of her work which were sold in Aid of The Village Hall and James Thurtell used some of their photographs to produce a calender which sold out by Christmas.

We also were fortunate in obtaining a £5000 lottery "Awards for all" Grant to pay for our initial Architects and planning fees, but failed in a bid for a Defra grant. We are currently pursuing a major lottery Grant.

A full programme of Fundraising event for 2007 is planned and include another Grand draw to be drawn at a Domino Drive on May 8th, Tickets Now available, A Broad Yorkshire Evening , A Music Night, Pub Quizzes and another Calendar.