Allanton Village Hall

Eddy Richards, Treasurer

Scottish Borders

Tell us about your village hall

Allanton is a small village, maybe about 50 or 60 houses, and the hall is in the middle of the village. It's a rural area, lots of agriculture. A lot of people in the village work. We have some older people, and families with children – the newest addition is about three months old.

The hall was originally a 1930s schoolhouse, and since then has been modified. It has a reasonably-sized main room, we can get in about 80 people. There’s a kitchen which is quite big and reasonably well-equipped, and then another smaller room. So it’s not huge, but it’s got reasonable facilities.

What activities happen in your hall?

We have a monthly coffee morning, which is well attended. You know we have probably 30 to 40 people most times – the village is only 150 people.

I started a ping pong club. It was just me and a couple of friends, then it grew and now it’s every week. Sometimes we even get too many people, we only have 3 tables!

We've just got some dance classes starting again, from someone coming to do it commercially, which is good. We had a taster session, and there were 35 people. That wasn't just from Allanton, they were coming from all over.

And we put on other events as a committee, from time to time, like nights and afternoon tea, and we do a community lunch where 7 or 8 people make soup and homemade bread. We did one at Christmas the year of Covid, which was really successful – we had 60 people, so it was pretty impressive. Sometimes we get people coming to us and saying, “Can we host a concert?” And occasionally people hire for birthday parties.

We host committee meetings for some of the local organisations like the Community Council. And there's a Scottish dancing society which has their committee meetings with us, and they also have a class every two weeks.

Covid stopped everything, and then several people running activities retired. One of the challenges now is we’re trying to get new things, regular lets. Even if we're getting £8-10 pounds for an hour, it's in use. You're covering the insurance a bit. You're covering the electricity. One of the issues financially is a lot of fixed charges which you have to pay, whether or not it’s in use, and so the fewer regular lets you have, the more you have to charge them to cover your costs. If it was in full use, we could charge less per hour, which would be nice.

Who’s on your committee?

I’m the Treasurer, and I also do the bookings – I’m not really sure how that happened! We've got six on the committee. Apart from one person, we all work.

And as well as the committee, there's also a bunch of other people who'll help out; we've got a guy who comes and strims the grass, and somebody else who weeds the flowers. At coffee mornings there’s always people happy to put the tables away, wash up and all that kind of stuff. So it’s a community feel – it’s not like a café where people come and they’re served.

We do try and get new people when we can, because it's good to have a variety, and it's good for people to have a rest and a change as well. Treasurer is probably the only thing you can't get rid of very easily, because nobody wants to do it!

We occasionally have a meetup of local village halls – we had a quiz night where every hall sent representatives, and just got to know each other.

What is your top tip for other village and community halls?

The main thing would be to understand how much effort you’re prepared to put into it. Be realistic about how much you want to do – it all takes time and energy. Don’t be disappointed by how many people will come to things, because sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. And also just seek advice. Ask other people in a similar position because they will help.