The community at Grosmont held a party on Saturday to celebrate the National Lottery Grant they have been awarded for their town hall hub project.

Councillor Nick Jones kicked off the event and welcomed everybody to the party held at the village square.

In 2017 the village was approached by Rural Futures, an organisation dedicated to supporting rural areas which led to the formation of the Grosmont Futures group, a community interest organisation founded by villagers in 2021. 

They teamed up with the community council, to put forward a project to breathe new life back into the town hall.

“They have worked tirelessly to realise a vision for Grosmont and its future: a community hub based at the Town Hall which will provide the services and activities so fundamental to the prosperity, sustenance and well-being of a community such as ours” said Nick.

The collective efforts of these organisations were recently rewarded with an enormous contribution of £300,000 from the National Lottery. Together with the generous funding of Rural Futures and Grosmont Community Council, “our vision will soon be a reality,” he added.

A cheque for  £286,000 was handed over to Councillor Lowri Wynn Morgan, Chair of the council by Micheal Dupree representing the National Lottery.

Cllr Wynn Morgan said that without all those who buy a lottery ticket, “our project and our vision would not be possible,” she said.

“Thank you to the Heritage Fund who have extended their grant to us to a whopping £50,000” and added that Grosmont Community Council had also added £30,000 to the fund.

“Recognition needs to be made to the Grosmont Futures and Grosmont Community Council for the wonderful event that’s been put on today.

“We also have to recognize and thank Chloe and Jim and all the staff at The Angel Inn for helping with these wonderful community events.” She went on to say the project is not just about the building work: “The project started with that tireless group of volunteers who have given up hours of their own time, with planning and form filling in order to take back this building and provide something for the community and not just as a local landmark.

“The next step is going to be that building phase and the future is what’s going to be involved in the running, and the offer of what this building is going to give to our village.”

Glasses were raised and a cheer went out through the village as two toasts were proposed by Lowri: The National Lottery and Rural Futures, and Grosmont Community Council with Grosmont Futures.

Grosmont Futures’ Peter Willis said there was a large cohort in the village who have been modestly working very hard for five years, this process started without any certainty of what was going to happen in the end and “commitment in abundance, endless effort, huge amount of time, and complicated things to overcome, challenges nobody saw, not only for the funding of it, but the tireless efforts of those who have been planning, those who spent most of last night setting this all up and of course dealing with the clear up tomorrow,” he added.

The village’s own Kitchen Singers provided a pleasant musical interlude then celebratory cakes were cut.