A Source of Pride to the Users

Furnishing and Decorating Your Village Hall

As recommended by the National Council of Social Service, 1945

The interior effect of a hall is made or marred by the way it is furnished and decorated. Good window and stage curtains harmonising with the colour scheme will add dignity to the hall. Chairs should be strong and comfortable and able to be stacked for storing. Steel chairs are light and strong, made in various attractive colours and easily stacked. Backless forms should be avoided. Three or four arm chairs in the committee room and adult club room should be provided.

A familiar stacked sight before moulded plastic was introduced.
When these came in, my fellow Brownies and I would see how many chairs we could sit on top of without feeling sick.

Card tables, trestle tables and one or two strong solid tables will be needed and plenty of cupboard room with stout shelving should be provided for cookery and cooking utensils, properties, books, games etc.

Many well-proportioned buildings do not look their best owing to the interior finish of the walls being uninteresting and the colour scheme dull. A plain brick interior may be pleasant at other times. A satisfactory alternative to plastering is to cover the wall with a thin rendering of cement, and to finish this with a colour wash. The lower part of the wall may be panelled with wood or a composition board.

Dark colours and varnished woodwork tend to look drab and depressing. An attractive interior should be a source of pride to the users, both as regards colour scheme, furnishing and curtains.

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Woods Ware China at the Serving Hatch - The Book!

I have now put together a book to accompany this blog, featuring all the best bits and much more besides, about the development and use of village halls over the past century. It costs £1.29 for a Kindle download and £3.99 for a printed version. Here's the blurb: "Enter any village hall and look at the noticeboard. The range of activities taking place these days is enough to keep anyone entertained. Cinema evenings, keep fit classes, scouts, Women’s Institute, St John’s Ambulance, lunch clubs, support groups - all keeping the physical and spiritual on the straight and narrow. Where would we be without the village hall? What a marvellous innovation, and one that seems to grow in importance as we realise that we have lost sight of community somewhat, and need to nurse it back to life. You might, if you were in a particularly philosophical mood while hanging around the vestibule, wonder where and how it all began." English village halls have been a fixture of our lands...

The Ode to the Village Hall

I hope that some of my own poems that I have published on this blog have raised a smile of recognition. But I’m not the first to write poetry inspired by village halls. Back in 1936, the Warwick Advertiser published an article about a Mr Smith, who had written a poem about the village hall at Hatton. This was so well received by friends and family, that he had 401 copies printed, and he sold them for a pound apiece. The profits were divided between the church fund and the working men’s club fund. Hatton Village Hall - the charming inspiration Happily for us, the Warwick Advertiser saw fit to publish Mr Smith’s acrostic: T his grand village hall which can scare be surpassed H as been built by one to remember those passed E ver thoughtful of others, kind friend of us all V ery ready to help and obey duty’s call I n summer or winter, in sunshine or rain L ending a hand without seeking to gain L ooking after the sick and helping the weak A nd a kind cheery s...

Bogarde's Beginnings

Village halls played a part in the early careers of many actors – some of them becoming world renowned. Who knows just how many household names first got a taste for the luvvie life at the local amateur dramatic society. Dirk Bogarde was certainly one of them, because he wrote about his experiences at Newick Village Hall, near Lewes. Dirk’s mother made the acquaintance of a Mrs Cox, whose husband was said to own the village hall. Dirk became good friends with the Coxs’ daughter and the family took to him, allowing him to indulge his teenage ambition of becoming a playwright. He wrote, and starred in “The Man on the Bench”, supported by Nerine Cox. It was performed around the time that Nazi Germany had marched into Austria – but a sparse audience with a lot on their minds nevertheless received it well. Mr Cox offered Dirk his first leading role shortly afterwards with the Newick Amateur Drama Society – Raleigh in R.C. Sherriff’s “Journey’s End”. “It was a tremendous ...

Woods Ware China at the Serving Hatch

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