Greenlaw War Memorial Hall

Kathryn Todd, Trustee

Scottish Borders

Tell us about your village hall

Ours is a community owned hall. The land was donated by the then Earl of Marchmont in the 1800s for the benefit of the local village, which is documented in a feu charter. The locals got together and fundraised for the hall to be built.

Built in 1882, the hall was known as The Good Templar Hall. Its name changed in 1919 in remembrance of the soldiers who had used the hall during the First World War. The hall had been used for many things over the years (including a factory) but laterally as a snooker club which closed due to lack of membership, and the building had fallen into disrepair. A new committee took over in 2007 and inherited £12.49 - that was what was left in the account.

Our hall has two management layers: a general committee including three trustees who oversee the generally running of the day-to-day management, and a secondary level of trustees (currently four) who ensure that the hall remains community owned. This has been in place since 1882 and usually these trustees only change is there us a death or they’re unable to fulfil their duties.

We managed to get funding of £289,000 to get the hall completely refurbished, and it opened in its new form in 2013. I had never done anything like this before. I'm a registered nurse. We were told we'd never manage to do it, but it gave us the fire in our belly to go "You know what? Don't underestimate this group of women."

Instead of just making plans and going with them we went door-to-door. We were able to formulate the business plan and incorporate the aspects that the village had asked us to keep in the hall, but also to develop it and make it more user-friendly for lots of different people.

It took six years to do the fundraising, to do all of that refurbishment work, to become a SCIO, all that practical stuff.

What activities happen in your hall?

At the moment the regular things we have are a yoga class, and a soup club on a Friday. Since Covid it has been slightly quieter, but is picking up again. Traditionally we've done teas, we've done birthday parties. A local employer uses us as a training facility. We have a local farmers group, the Scottish Agricultural Association, that come and do a lunch and a talk. We do the local Christmas dinner, a Burns supper. There's been a youth group - that's been very dependent on leaders, and got hit by Covid too.

We're very frugal. But this year I think we're going to end up running at a loss - that'll be the first time for a number of years. We got a grant during covid, and that helped us stay above water. We've got solar panels on the roof, so we've got a small income from them. And we try to get people hiring the hall.

The core of the committee is the people who started in 2007. But there's only six of us doing all this work. We do bounce off each other, we can help each other.

What would you like to happen next for your village hall?

I'd like to see more people involved, bigger village participation. More people on the committee so that the work can be spread around a bit more. I’d like to see more groups or ideas put forward to provide further social activities or interactions. Also to be more digitally aware. And having a resource, somewhere that you can go, whether it be a website, a handbook, that people can get information that they might need. There is support, it's just knowing where to find it.