Tir-y-Berth Village Hall is set to be demolished and replaced with a brand new building, thanks to a Big Lottery Fund grant of nearly £400,000.
The village hall management committee have been working on the grant application for the past 18 months and were told last month that their bid to the Big Lottery Fund’s People and Places Programme had been successful.
The existing prefabricated hall is set to be demolished and replaced with a brick building, which will last for generations.
Cllr Hefin David, chairman of the management committee said: “This is the result of a long period of hard work by the volunteers on the committee. The current hall was built in 1974 and had an estimated life of 25 years. Since 1999, the hall has been increasingly costly to maintain and would likely have been condemned in the next few years.
“This Big Lottery Fund Grant will enable us to replace the hall with a building that will have an extra function room and an adjoining landscaped car park, which will also ease congestion on Horner Street.”
“This is great news for all of the residents of Tir-y-Berth, many of whom sent us letters of support to accompany our grant application. It is a wonderful example of the strength of the community spirit in Tir-y-Berth and what we can achieve when we all work together.”
Work on the hall is expected to begin in the coming months and the project is expected to last a year from the time it starts. The new hall will be able to offer twice the space of the current building.
Sue Harper, a local resident and secretary of the management committee, said: “We are delighted. We have had to turn away some groups wanting to use the hall in the past. Now we will be able to offer space to more community groups in a building that will be built to last.”
The People and Places programme awards grants of between £5,001 and £1 million for a broad range of community projects.
Gareth Newton, of the Big Lottery Fund in Wales, said: “Programmes like People and Places are making a difference to the lives of so many people in communities such as this one across Wales. It delivers on our promise to use National Lottery funding to regenerate and revitalise communities, tackle disadvantage head on and leave a lasting legacy.”
Well done to all the committee. A brilliant achievement!
County Councillor James Pritchard quite rightly congratulates this voluntary Committee on a brilliant achievement in securing their community hall for future generations to enjoy.
Should the same be said for the many people who give up their time freely to maintain the community facilities in Park Lane Caerphilly, most of which costs the council nothing to provide.
The support of all local elected Councillors in Caerphilly, like Cllr. James Pritchard, will be welcome by the towns electorate, next year, when his council decide on raising those buildings in Park Lane Caerphilly to the ground, including, so we are told, the one building in Park Lane which the council have not spent one penny on in maintaining, that is, the well maintained hall at the top entrance to the Castle Grounds,used by hundreds of Caerphilly pensioners, FREE, every week, for a variety of uses, this hall was built by the people of the town in 1953, from voluntary contributions, and has been maintained ever since without public contribution.
This is fantastic!! We, as a Ballet School, very local to this area, would really love to use your hall.
Great news about a new building for Tiryberth. I have never lived there ,but used to work there for many years and feel an affection for the village and the people. I wish you all the best of luck with the new venture. Pat Whelan. .