Shropshire village hall celebrates £60,000 funding for facelift

The hall's committee will use the money to build a meeting and sports viewing room at the hall to open it up to more uses and allow multiple events to be held on the same day.

The funding comes from the Garfield Weston Foundation, which launched the Weston Anniversary Fund earlier this year to support charities and community organisations to improve their facilities.

Just 150 projects were awarded grants out of more than 2,300 applications, with a total of £11 million being dished out to groups across the UK.

Village hall trustee Ishbel Yellowley said: "The award of this grant by the Garfield Weston Foundation will enable the committee to build a meeting room which will further enhance the already well used community building.

"This addition is part of an ongoing refurbishment of the hall which was built in 1911. The refurbishment began in 2008 with the new service block and continued with the main hall.

"The grant will also include upgrading the surroundings of the war memorial and improve disabled access to the sports field."

The hall is used extensively by the community, hosting parish council meetings, bridge and bowls clubs and fitness classes, and is booked all year round for birthday parties and other private functions.

Each autumn a car boot sale draws in crowds from across the area, and several jumble sales are held during the year.

Maureen Round, villager and editor of the Ashford Parish Magazine, said: "The grant award will provide an exciting opportunity for the keen and dedicated committee who are all volunteers, to build the new meeting room, enabling more than one event to take place on the same day and complete improvements wished for by the community.

"Our village would be very much poorer without the village hall."