The original Memorial Hall
The original Fownhope Memorial Hall was an ex-army hut made of corrugated iron and timber. In 1922 it was transported by horse and cart from Salisbury Plain and was erected, by men from the village, on the site of the present Hall. The land had been donated two years earlier by Edmund Lechmere: “a parcel of land being part of the orchard known as Church Croft”. The building was in memory of the fourteen men of Fownhope who had fallen in the Great War. The original indenture was signed by nine Trustees: Alfred Maundslay, Capel Hardwick, William Harper, James Biggs, Rowland Timbrell, William Hill and Mrs Ellison Higgs.
The cost of this original hall was covered by local subscription and fund raising. For example, a Mrs Fox gave away 300 sixpences which were then used by people to make money. One lass used her sixpence to buy eggs which she incubated and then sold the chicks that had hatched out.
The Memorial Hall was opened on 18th December 1922 by Col H E F Patteshall of the 1st Herefordshire Regiment. It cost £1,338.
The original indenture stipulated that the Hall was to be run by a Management Committee elected every three years, which was to be composed of representatives each from the Church, the Baptist Chapel, a farmer, a trader, “one or more ladies having time and leisure to devote to the welfare of the women and girls using the hall”, plus two to four unconditional members.
“For over 60 years the Hall provided facilities for the villagers and their clubs, as well as their education – there were cookery and dairying classes for the children and it was regularly used by the pupils of the old school. In those pre-TV days it was the centre of the village social life. There were regular concerts by the Choral Society, the Church Choir, the Guides, the Anglican young Peoples Association, individual instrumentalists and of course the Fownhope Symphony Orchestra, who gave a performance of the Rev Chigwell’s first symphony, on television, in 1954. The instruments being: piano, violins, toy drum, toy trumpet and ocarina. The League of Health and Beauty, country dancing, and Scottish dancing classes gave displays and plays were put on by village groups, and also by theatre groups coming out from Hereford with a reperatory of plays over a three week period. Choir suppers, bell ringers’ socials, Sunday School Christmas parties, British Legion dinners, whist drives, flower and vegetable shows, the welfare clinic, regular meetings of the Women’s Institute, the Men’s Club . . . “
