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Village Hall News and Consultation
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Village Hall Update November 2022
Hello to everyone from the village hall committee! We’re gearing up for a fantastic New Year’s Eve in the newly refurbished hall, and look forward to seeing lots and lots of you there… Full details are below, along with an update on how things are coming along.
WORKS UPDATE
While there are several big items still on the ‘to do’ list for Phase 3 (notably the final toilet fittings and the outside area), the hall is now ready for use. The plastering and rendering is all done, lighting, central heating and WiFi are all operational, and the outside back bifold doors will soon be fitted. Work will be paused for the festive season on 15th December, and we’ll be ready for cleaning teams to move on and get everything spick and span! If you could spare a few hours to help with the cleaning, please get in touch with Sue on sue.clark@leemarisk.com
FINANCE AND FUNDING
Grateful thanks as always to residents of the village who have made donations recently to the village hall fund, and to Jane Nash for facilitating a £1000 grant from the Matthew Good Foundation. Donations of any size are always very welcome, especially as public funding has become rather scarce in the post-Covid era. We are waiting to hear if our bid for Lottery funding has got through to the second stage, and we are always on the lookout for new funding opportunities. If you have any ideas for raising money, please let us know!
BOOKING THE HALL
Bookings for the hall will be welcome from January, so if you would like to hold an event there, please get in touch. We have to charge, as the upkeep and maintenance of the hall costs money, but please be assured that there will be a special discounted rate for Eyke residents’ non-commercial events. We are working out the rates right now, and they’ll be published on the website very soon.
NEW YEAR'S EVE
This promises to be a great night, with a cash bar (organised by Marie, with drinks at below pub prices), a proper disco and of course a prize draw. The evening will run from 8pm through to 12:30am, and tickets are £10. You are welcome to bring your own snacks. Please do come along, join the fun, and check out your new village hall. Tickets from Sue Clark – 07919 158962 or Linda MacFarlane 07500 900560
JOB OPPORTUNITY
We are still looking for a hall manager to take charge of the day-to-day running of the hall, including administration and light cleaning. If you or anyone you know would be interested in this paid position, please get in touch.
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Village Hall Update October/November 2021
WORKS UPDATE
With £15,000 pounds now spent on various specialist trade jobs, not to mention a huge amount of voluntary work, the front part of the village hall is now nearing completion. The kitchen has been plastered and a first coat of paint applied, and radiators have been fitted in the hall and lobby. The lobby itself has been painted, and will soon get some temporary flooring so the hall can be used safely and comfortably during the second stage of the project. The loos will be usable by the end of November, and most of the kitchen units have already been assembled and are ready for installation and final plumbing-in. Planning and consultations are now under way to prepare for the refurbishment of the main hall area, starting in the new year.
And of course we’re making sure that everything stays safe and secure, with security alarms and monitoring…!
NEW YEAR’S EVE
It’s time to be sociable again after eighteen months of enforced distancing, and New Year’s Eve in the village hall is the hot ticket of the moment! Come and see the new year in with music and dancing, starting at 8pm. Tickets are £10, including snacks and your first drink, and there will be a pay bar in place in the new kitchen. Look for flyers on the website and around the village.
JAMES MALLINDER
James’s Go Fund Me page is very nearly at the £300 he was aiming for, with every penny going to the village hall refurbishment fund. He undertakes his Adnams 10K run in Southwold on 28th November. Please support him!
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Update - October 2021
You might well know James Mallinder, who is our district councillor for the Deben ward. On 25th November he will be undertaking the Adnams 10k run with the aim of raising £300 (and maybe more?) for the ongoing refurbishment of the village hall.
James says: ‘It is really important each parish has a strong, active, local village hub. After losing the pub and shop, Eyke only has the village hall left as a village asset’. Please sponsor him and be part of the effort to turn the hall back into a local asset that will be at the centre of community life for years to come.
You can donate via James’s JustGiving page at: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/james-mallinder?utm_id=2&utm_term= QBMdy5WWG
Let’s get together to help James raise that £300 for the village hall! Every pound donated goes straight towards supporting the work which is being carried out on the hall right now.
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Update - September 2021
Hello to everyone from the Village Hall committee! Here’s what’s been going on since we were last in touch…
WORKS UPDATE
Good progress was made during the school holidays, and we are now near the end of the first stage of work. This is the least visible stage, but perhaps the most important one, as we work to put in place a solid infrastructure that will ensure the hall remains serviceable for decades to come. All the excavations have now finished (accumulating in the process an amazing 40 tons of rubble), the crucial drainage and fresh water pipes are all in, and backfilling has begun. The kitchen is also well advanced, with all first fixings done and plastering and skimming about to start. The kitchen units are assembled and ready for installation, and we will soon be sourcing the new white goods made possible by Sir Michael Bunbury’s generous donation.
Next up is the task of completing external work such as the guttering and sofits, ensuring that the hall is weatherproofed for the winter. The second and third stages of work will begin in the new year, as we turn our attention to internal matters like heating, plumbing and insulation. The stage will eventually be removed, meaning more space, functionality and versatility, and as the carefully staged phases of work progress, you will finally see the all-important loos made fit for the 2020s! Hooray!
FINANCE AND FUNDING UPDATE
This month’s good news is that we have been invited to reapply for a grant of £14,000 from DEFRA via Community Action Suffolk. This is a grant that we thought we had narrowly missed out on, but as it seems that other community groups which were initially successful have been unable to commence their works within the agreed time limit, some of the money has now become available again. So watch this space… Meanwhile our financial position continues to be sound, with a total of a little over £50,000 in the bank. Two grants totalling £4900 have now come in from East Suffolk, earmarked for doors and a disabled toilet.
VOLUNTEERS, PLEASE!
If you are able to offer your services to help the refurbishment of the hall, please email Sue Clark at sue.clark@leemarisk.com or phone 07919 158962. We’re always on the lookout for people with skills that can be put to use for the good of the village, and we’ll be hugely grateful for any offer of time or expertise. This is a community project, by and for the community, and it’s always great to see people get involved in it.
Which brings us very neatly to the last and most important part of this Update…
THANK YOU, NEIL!
Of all the people who have worked to get us to this point, probably none has had or will have a greater impact than Neil Smith. While future stages of work will be done in large part by outside contractors, the obvious financial constraints of a project of this kind, plus the unexpected constraints brought by Covid, meant that for the crucial first stage we were able to use only a very limited number of outside specialists. So for most of these last nine months, the burden of physically transforming the village hall has been shouldered by Neil alone, putting in long hours of hard and often technically challenging work. He has achieved a huge amount with scant resources, and it is no exaggeration to say that without Neil, we simply couldn’t be where we are now. His contribution has been immense, and future users of the village hall for years to come will be greatly in his debt. Thank you, Neil!
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Update - May 2021
Hello from the Village Hall committee! Here’s a quick rundown of the latest news…
WORKS UPDATE
Work will shortly begin installing kitchen utilities such as a dishwasher, cooker and fridge freezer, as well as getting the kitchen walls tiled. We have also been busy looking at pipework and plumbing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the stopcock was jammed solid and some of the pipes have been revealed to be in a very dilapidated state indeed . But work is moving ahead, both inside and out. The trees at the back of the hall should be removed soon, and there will be other work to improve the outside areas of the hall.
FUNDING UPDATE
A massive thank you to everyone who has been kind enough to donate to the village hall fund, and in particular to Sir Michael Bunbury for his generous gift. £600 in donations has in fact gone into the bank since our last update, with other funding still in the pipeline, we hope to reach a new total of about £60,000 very soon. We also received a welcome gift of electrical equipment. Please do keep your donations, gifts and ideas for fundraising coming: we are very grateful, and as you can see from the way the work is progressing, it really does make a difference. Thank you!
WATCH THIS SPACE
With work on the hall well under way and the end of Covid-19 restrictions hopefully now in sight, it’s at last time to think about bringing the hall back into use. We are hoping to be able to mount at least some sort of Village Fete this summer – perhaps a ‘mini-fete’ centred around the hall and the churchyard – and to organise perennial favourites such as a Quiz Night and a candlelit Harvest Supper. No exact dates yet, as everything of course depends on the public health situation, but keep your fingers crossed and watch this space for further details!
CONTACT
Suggestions, ideas, comments? Would you like to make a donation, however small, or offer goods or services to help the refurbishment of the hall? Please email Sue Clark at sue.clark@leemarisk.com or phone 07919 158962.
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Update - March 2021
Hello to everyone, from the Eyke Village Hall Committee! We’re a registered charity. We’d like to introduce ourselves, tell you a bit about what we’re doing and what we plan to do in the future, and invite you to get involved in planning the future of our fantastic community resource, the village hall.
WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE DO
The Committee is chaired by Sue Clark. The other current members are Jackie Pooley, Jacqui Holden, Sarah Veale, Linda Macfarlane, Dave ‘Mac’ Macfarlane and Tim Marr. Our immediate aim is to set about the refurbishment and modernisation of the hall, so that it once more becomes a place where a whole host of village events can be comfortably and safely staged. To this end, we have been busily raising funds from lots of different sources.
WHERE WE ARE RIGHT NOW
We already have a fair amount of funding in place, though of course we’re always on the lookout for more! As things stand, we have raised a total of £40,500 with a further £12,000+ in the pipeline and awaiting confirmation. This has come from various sources including a Community Partnership grant of £2,500 towards the new kitchen, Covid-19 grants of £18,000, a Business Grant of £8,600, and donations from well-wishers. We’d like to say a massive thank you to all of them! It’s great to know that so many people and organisations are supporting our efforts. We also have funds in reserve from the Parish Council, and outstanding applications for grants lodged with, amongst others, the Lotteries Commission and Reviving Our Community.
As a result, we are now ready to move on to the first stage of the planned work. In our schedule for the next twelve months, the top priorities are:
- repairs to the fabric of the building (including replacing drains and other plumbing, and renewing the approach to the hall)
- refurbishing and improving the useability of the kitchen (including commercial-style fittings, new windows, a dishwasher, a new water heater)
- freshening and modernising the toilets (including new hygienic hand dryers, energy-efficient lighting)
We have invited tenders for this work, and we hope to be able to announce very soon when it will be carried out. You should see the first improvements to the hall quite quickly.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE?
As we move on from the first stage of work, we are very keen to know what you, the residents of Eyke, would like to see happen to the village hall, and get opinions about the various options open to us. Attached you will find a short questionnaire. We would be very grateful if you could complete the survey (it will only take five minutes!). You can complete it:
- online (see below)
- down load from the documentation area on the left, print it out, complete and pop it through the letter box of one of the committee members
- or email a scanned copy of a completed printed version or electronically marked up copy to Sue Clark at sue.clark@leemarisk.com
HELP OUT!
We are always on the lookout for ideas for fundraising – please contact us if you have any thoughts about how we might keep the money coming in. We also welcome volunteers with any special skills or just some time to spare, and of course we are delighted to receive donations. One thoughtful anonymous donor has given a generous £300, with the stipulation that it be used to replace ‘the ‘awful kitchen crockery’… Consider it done, Anonymous, and many thanks! (Was the old crockery really that bad? Hmm… yes, maybe it was).
WAYS OF STAYING IN TOUCH
We will be posting regular updates on the village hall work and our future plans on this website, on our Facebook page at #eykesuffolk, on Twitter @eykesuffolk, and from time to time in All Saints News. Please contact us, though, in any way at all that you find convenient, including email or old-school pen and paper. We want to hear what you think.
QUESTIONNAIRE
It’s your village hall – how can we make it better for you? Please take the time to complete our short questionnaire
First, a few questions about you: