About 30 people joined our community meeting on 24 May to find out about the plans to reopen the Town Hall.
Our Project Manager, Julian Mellor, gave a brief history of the building and the past work of the Trust after which Trustee Chris Perry explained the agile approach to bringing the Town Hall back into public use. While past schemes have always planned to restore the building in one go we have now switched to taking a succession of small steps with each step making a real improvement. The first step has been to make sure the building is safe for public use.
The first step is now all but completed and we hope to be able to reopen the building in the summer. But it will be very basic inside; we will have electricity and seats but we won’t have water, we won’t have heating and it hasn’t been redecorated since the 1940s. So while we will be welcoming the public through the doors for the first time in 60 years, you shouldn’t come expecting five star comfort!
Everyone who came to the meeting was asked to think about the type of shows and events they would like to see at the reopened Town Hall. Ideas ranged from live music, to cinema, theatre, lectures, festivals, hustings and comedy. There were also discussions about how to run the Town Hall once it is reopened including marketing, building maintenance, front-of-house and fundraising. But everyone was clear that the Town Hall must add to and complement other existing facilities like the community centre, and not compete with them or create duplication.
In the next few weeks, once electricity is connected, the lights will be switched on for the first time in decades. Keep an eye out for an announcement about how we’ll be marking this occasion. Then on Saturday 22 July we will be holding a volunteer work-day to give the Town Hall a good scrub. And from the late summer we will start a programme of occasional events, increasing their frequency as we learn to live with the building and improve the facilities inside.
Thank you to everyone who came to the community meeting – it’s great that there’s so much enthusiasm and energy to get the Town Hall open once again.
And which was the odd one out? The answer is Josh Widdicombe. The reasoning is: They all have a connection to the Town Hall but Josh Widdicombe has never owned or leased it. 1. Lord Ashburton built and owned the building. 2. The Coop now owns the building. 3. John Bone was Chair of Trustees when they took a lease of the building. 4. Josh Widdicombe is decended from Lord Ashburton (well, his uncle to be precise) but he’s never owned or leased the Town Hall.
