Melbourn hall set for official opening

A £280,000 community hall will be opening in Melbourn in the middle of the month. The hall at All Saints Church has been nine years in the making, and will replace a previous pre-fab church hall on the site. The Rev Andrew O Brien said: The community has

A £280,000 community hall will be opening in Melbourn in the middle of the month.

The hall at All Saints Church has been nine years in the making, and will replace a previous pre-fab church hall on the site.

The Rev Andrew O'Brien said: "The community has shown its support for the project by giving time and energy in painting and tiling the new hall and landscaping the grounds."

Some of the main sponsors towards the project have been the TTP Group, Barclays Capital, Johnson Mat-they, Rugby Cement, the Garfield Weston Foundation, and the Department for the Environment.

Mr O'Brien said that over the years, too, there had been a number of "interesting" fund-raising activities in the community.

These included Mr O'Brien becoming a waiter for the evening at the Pink Geranium restaurant, and an antiques valuation day with Thomas Plant from the series Flog It.

There was also a day of action when staff from Motorola helped in demolishing the old building.

The new community hall will be opened on Saturday, June 21, by Dr Gerald Avison, group chairman of the TTP Group, and long-standing resident Daphne Black.