Two or Three Nights a Week

Extract from an article in the Summer 1951 issue of “The Countryman” on an Essex village:

“Miss A runs the village boy’s club. It is about 50 strong at the moment, though that figure is perhaps misleading. Its real membership runs into many hundreds, and it is on this shadow strength that the lady’s reputation rests. The club is held on two or three nights a week in the village hall, the usual pitch-pine-and-varnish building which elsewhere seems to produce an atmosphere of genteel apathy. We went to see it. During the day it was deserted, but hardly empty; for round the walls, with scarcely a break, hung the framed photographs which recorded the club’s annual beanfeasts. Instead of showing the year’s crop of thirteen and fourteen year olds, each picture was crammed full with young men and women, and older ones as well, ranged at the supper tables, row on row, until beyond the reach of the flashlight glare the faces faded into the background. The photographs went back year by year through both world wars and the period between them; and in place of honour there was a framed chart of the family trees of those club members whose sons, and today grandsons, had followed in their footsteps.”

A photo of Messing Village Hall, Essex, for illustrative purposes only. The article didn't specify which village it was about. I chose this one because I like the name.

Running an amateur theatre company at a village hall? Find out how Lilian Baylis raised money for the Old Vic by clicking here

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Woods Ware China at the Serving Hatch

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