Building community around a church hall.
Late 2023 we discovered the local church hall was finally going up for sale after being sat empty for sometime. Several worried neighbours of the hall came and asked if we knew how to save it. I shared my research on community buying that I had done over the past 2 years, and a meeting was called.
From there an enthusastic group met each Tuesday at the Langley Taven, our local pub. I put up a page on this website to get information out there, we had leaflets printed which were delivered to the local homes, posters where put up and we did a survey to see the support we had.
There is now a website and facebook page for the Langley community.
Several local groups applied to have the hall as a community asset, but as yet that has not been confirmed as sadly there were 2 objections.
We sent members of our working group to the viewing day, it was good to see the hall is not in as bad a state as we had been lead to believe, it would be easy to get it back to a usable state.
As a group it was felt that the time scales for us to put in a bid were too short and as we would have to form offically as a group and then raise the funds to purchase it was not going to be viable for us to bid for the church at this time.
Two local churchs that do not have their own buildings are going to put bids in and we have met with both of them to understand who they are and what their plans would be for the hall. Both are lovely and as a group it was felt that either of them would be great neighbours. As such we have written a letter of support with as many local signatures as we could for either of them to be the new owners.
It might seem a little disapointing we haven't mangaed to save the hall, but unless neither church get the hall we have little more we can do.
But something amazing has happened ! As a group it was felt that to keep meeting and looking at what we could do for our community - Langley residents - so there are lots of plans on how to keep our little vilaage connected and look after it a bit more. Stories of the hall and lives of those who have and do live in Langley are being collected, social evenings, events throughout the year, even talk of bringing back christmas lights Langley was know for are all being talked about.
A communtiy is being rebuilt from the desire to save the church hall.
And for me this is the biggest win of all.
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Saving St Francis Hall
St Francis Church Hall, Langley, New Forest.
Although it doesn't look like it right now is a much loved community space in Langley, the waterside area of the New Forest. The church that owns the building is putting it up for sale. We would like to save it and turn it into a community hall to be used by the people of Langley and surrounding areas.
Lots more information will be added as we get it, and as soon as possible our Langley Community Website. In the meantime New Forest Aquaponics CIC are hosting the information as regenerating local community is very much at the heart of what they do,
We have held our first meeting, which showed us there is enough local support to take the next step. A working group will be formed, to start the process of saving the hall.
It will be a huge task, people all over the UK are saving local buildings to keep them in use, so why can't we?
