Memorial Hall
Bookings can be made with W Sturgess on 01225 722510.
The Memorial Hall is situated in the Village and it is used for staging functions, parties, Club activities, Polling Station, meetings, etc. It comprises a hall, committee room, kitchen, toilets and storage room and it has the capacity for 115 dancing and 60 seated.
The charges for its use are £10.50 per hour for the main hall and £6 per hour for the committee room. Equipment such as tables, chairs, cutlery, glasses etc. and can also be hired if required.
The Committee meets about six times a year and the main Officers are
Chairman:
W Sturges
Treasurer:
James Roberts Wray
The Committee are proud that the Hall has achieved a HALLMARK AWARD, level one, from Community Action, the Rural Community Council for the former county of Avon.
Upcoming Events
Following a very successful Market in the Hall in September and December another one is planned in the New Year. See News & Diary
Village Meeting
From discussions about the annual Village Fete to planning for the maintenance and improvement of our local facilities, the Memorial Hall is where we come together to ensure Hinton Charterhouse remains a thriving and vibrant community. To stay informed about upcoming village meetings, be sure to check the News & Diary section of our website regularly for the latest announcements and details.
History of the Hall
The Recreation Rooms and Hinton Memorial Hall 1882-2015 by Isla Tuck
The present Memorial Hall in Hinton has its roots back in 1882 when Edward Foxcroft of Hinton House bought Hinton Farm from Mr Willis and he and Mrs Foxcroft decided to lend the large room at the back of the old farmhouse (now Hall Cottage) as a Recreation Room for the young men of the village. At that time the present Hall was still a barn attached to the old house. Rooms for reading and recreation were often either built or loaned in many of the villages and were aimed at occupying and to some degree educating young men who had little to do after work and it was feared might otherwise gravitate to the pub. In Hinton, there had been a lending library started by the Rev. Thomas Spencer in the 1830’s probably in a room in what is now called Long Cottage near the church but by the 1880’s there is no mention of it.
Miss Margaret Foxcroft wrote an account of the Recreation Rooms a few years before her death in 1941 which included the following:
At that time there was very little opportunity for recreation or amusement in country villages. Bicycles had not come into common use and opportunities for getting into town were much less frequent than at present. The only daily papers taken at that time were, I believe, at Hinton House and the Vicarage; and they were not delivered till the next day. Of course, the public houses had a paper. Mr and Mrs Foxcroft took in papers for the Rooms; provided bagatelle, dominoes, draughts, and other games and entirely did up the rooms and furnished them and let them rent and rate free. A Committee of Members was appointed to manage the Rooms and Mr F. Colborne kindly acted as Secretary for 45 years. Refreshments were provided at a small charge both for the young in the Rooms and for travellers on the road – tea, coffee, cocoa, cake and gingerbread were sold in pennyworths and in1883 I see the year’s receipts for these pennyworths amounted to nearly £25, or almost 10/- a week. Sugar was 3d a lb, tea 2/-, cocoa 6d, and coal 8d per cwt at pithead (Mr Crisp kindly hauling it free)
From the beginning, a caretaker was appointed and the first of these was Mrs Susan Bath who was paid 4/- a week and lived rent-free in the rest of the cottage on condition that she was always on the premises to supply travellers who frequently stopped for refreshments and in addition be available in the evenings to supply cake and cocoa etc., to the members. Over the succeeding years, a second Room was added and caretakers succeeding Mrs Bath had additional duties – perhaps as the travellers wanting cocoa decreased – and they became responsible for preparing the rooms for meetings when called upon to do so. The final caretakers were Mr and Mrs Arthur Swift, appointed in 1911 – Margaret Foxcroft notes Arthur Swift was the first Hinton man to volunteer at the beginning of the Great War. He and his family remained in the cottage well into living memory.
As well as the bagatelle and dominoes originally supplied, a lending library was added in 1895 under the direction of Miss Violet Foxcroft. Some of the books were donated and among the donors was the celebrated social scientist, Herbert Spencer, who sent several of his own books. In the 1830s, as a boy, he had lived at the vicarage with his uncle for three years. Apart from the permanent selection Violet Foxcroft ordered books from a central lending library and some of her surviving lists show a mixture of adventure stories and books with a more educational approach. In addition to games and books, it seems that from time to time there were lectures or talks as I have found notes for a talk on Egypt by Violet Foxcoft (she had recently visited her brother there) and the outline for a talk on Alfred the Great by her sister Helen. It would be interesting to know if these were enjoyed or merely politely tolerated as an interruption to other activities – although there was doubtless a good audience when Ernest Shackleton, the explorer, and a relation of the Vicar’s wife, gave a talk to the village.
A small notebook which covers the years 1905-1925 records the names of members who paid a quarterly subscription of 1/- , This rose to 2/6 after the war when numbers gradually declined until membership closed in 1926 from lack of support. In the early years of the century, membership had risen to over thirty and included many well-known Hinton names with Swifts and Andrews the most constant. However society was changing and the effect of the war, better transport and perhaps the possibility of an evening at the cinema were starting to change people’s lives. 1n 1921 Captain Charles Foxcroft had given the barn which was attached to the Rooms to the village as a memorial to all in Hinton who had served in the Great War. A door was made between the Rooms and the new Hall so that the facilities for tea and coffee would be available as this was long before the present kitchen and cloakrooms were added.
As the young men were losing interest in the Rooms another organisation was gathering strength. In 1923 Miss Margaret Foxcroft had started a branch of the relatively new Womens Institute which was to flourish in Hinton for many years, using the Hall as its meeting place. The Hall was used in World War II for many fund-raising events such as dances, whist drives and a very successful auction with the money going to government bonds to aid the war effort. It also played an important role as an emergency Rest Centre when Bath was bombed. Beds which had been previously provided by the Local Council were set out by village volunteers for some of the many who streamed out of Bath in April 1942. Over the intervening years, there have been a number of changes to the Hall which is no longer joined to the Rooms. The kitchen, cloakrooms and more recently the car park have been added and although our village Hall is not the most modern, it holds a lot of Hinton history and is still an excellent choice for meetings, children’s parties, classes and coffee mornings.
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