Your village hall needs you!
Don’t forget there’s another Cranborne Village Hall Maintenance Club this Saturday, between 2.00pm and 5.00pm.
Lots of small jobs to do both inside and out. Come when you can and stay for as long as you can, and bring your own tools and products if possible.
We’ll also be meeting on Thursdays from next week, 5pm – 8pm. Everyone welcome!
Salisbury Wood Floors Ltd have been commissioned by Cranborne Estate to fix the area of the floor that lifted, cut expansion gaps along both sides of the hall to prevent the problem from recurring and sand and relacquer the whole floor, so by the end of the week, if all goes to schedule, we should have a beautiful shiny new floor, with freshly applied badminton AND pickle ball court lines!
Get your rackets ready 🙂
Starting this weekend, we’ll be having a twice-weekly Maintenance Club at the Village Hall; Saturday 2pm – 5pm and, starting from Thursday 20th March, Thursdays 5pm – 7pm.
All sorts of things need doing, but nothing too onerous. If you can make it, then let us know (email caretaker@cranbornevillagehall.org.uk) or just turn up tomorrow (Sat 8th) or on Thursdays from 20th March) – the more the merrier.
And if you have any specific maintenance skills then please get in touch!
Photo by Sam Clarke on Unsplash
A reminder to come along to the Village Hall update meeting tomorrow, Wednesday 5th March, at 6.30pm – in the Village Hall!
We will update you on the latest plans for getting the Hall open again. We’d love to see you there! Spread the word….
After the wonderful improvements made last weekend on the garden it is now time to put on our marigolds and move indoors!
We are going to have the hall open between 10am and 3pm on Saturday and Sunday so if you have an hour or two you can spare during those slots we would really appreciate it.
We would like to get the committee room and kitchen cleaned up and there is still some work needed on the gravel outside for those of you who prefer gardening to cleaning!
Please bring your own equipment including gloves.
Photo Credit: Austrian National Library on Unsplash
DATE FOR YOUR DIARIES! We are fundraising again. Together with our lovely friends at The Book And Bucket Cheese Company and Sheaf of Arrows – Cranborne we would like to invite you to The Great Big Cranborne Quiz in aid of Cranborne Village Hall on Thursday 27th March at 7pm.
Come along and pit your wits against friends and neighbours – there’s a trophy and some cheese to be won!
To book your table, please email hello@cranbornevillagehall.org.uk. We hope to see you there…
The sun shone on 18 wonderful volunteers who spent Saturday beavering away at the Village Hall, getting the hedge cut back before nesting bird season and clearing the garden and gutters of weeds, ivy and moss. The transformation we achieved in just one day is amazing.
A particular shout out to Bradley from GreenCut gardener whose expertise made short shrift of the brambles – and Alison and Mark whose sausage rolls and donuts kept us going 
We will need continued support and enthusiasm from volunteers to get our hall open and flourishing – so don’t worry if you missed out on the fun this time, there are plenty more opportunities to get stuck in coming up shortly.
Please keep your eyes peeled for the next work party date and bring your friends and neighbours – many hands make light work
The Estate has very kindly given us the opportunity to carry out some gardening works to the outside area of our soon-to-be-reborn hall.
On Saturday (and Sunday if needed) between 10:00 and 16:00, a group of us will be working to cut back the hedge next to Lovers Lane (and the First School) and weed the gravel and paved areas using hoes and hedge cutting kit. We need your help please. The hedge needs to be cut back before 1st March as nesting birds may be present after that date and legislation prevents hedge cutting until next winter.
The Cranborne Bloomers also have a work party on Saturday so please, if you were intending to help them, please do that as a priority. They were there first, we are the new kids in town.
If you want to join us on Saturday or Sunday, please reply to this email or just turn up in clothes for gardening.
Useful tools:
Rakes, hoes, cultivators hedge trimmers, trowels, wheel barrows, gloves (hedge is mostly brambles).
A smile!
The charity which hopes to run the village hall in the future has now been set up with Anna McElwaine as chair and Claire Whitehead, Kathy Cleary and Mark Farmer as trustees. We are called: Cecil Memorial Hall Cranborne 2024.
Conversations to change the day to day ownership of the hall from the Parish Council – to Cranborne Estate are ongoing.
It is the hope that the hall will reopen to be run by the new charity on completion of these negotiations and the agreement and completion of a lease from the Estate to the new CIO.
We will keep you informed of our progress towards the reopening of the hall.
Wow. Just Wow. What a great day we had at the Christmas Fayre at Boveridge College last weekend. The sun came out and our raffle raised a TOTALLY FANTASTIC £866..
Big, sincere thanks to Odette Osborne and her team at Boveridge College for inviting us along to join in with the students and other stallholders.
Big thanks also to our supporters who donated so generously towards the prizes… and of course to the hardworking gang of tickets elves who gave up their time over the weekend to make the whole thing so successful. We simply could not have done it without you.
We hope that our Charity Commission application will be approved early in the new Year and we are already thinking about our events calendar for 2025… Please do let us know what you would like to see here in your village…and get in touch if you can spare even an hour or two to help organise
In the meantime, we wish you a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year..!
Anna, Kathy, Claire and Mark
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