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June 2021
of food to be sent across to the food bank in Bere Regis where they have been
able to offer support to several families through this very challenging year.
The hall was also a central point for people to
collect fabric and threads as many in our
community set about embroidering a picture of
life in lockdown. The finished article will in due
course be on permanent display in the hall as a
reminder of this time in our history. Jenny’s jams
have also been able to be on display raising
funds some of which have been donated
towards the new dishwasher the hall needed and
is currently raising money to support the Joseph
Weld Hospice. Allan Smith’s honey has also been
available with its monies raised being donated to
the hall funds.
The trustees managed to secure the government grant of £10,000 which enabled
us to continue to cover our ongoing overheads without dipping into reserves
which are primarily set aside for the upkeep of our thatched roof.
The money from the grants is all but gone now and so we hope soon to be able to
start to welcome back our regular hirers and start to see things get back to normal,
whatever that may look like going forward.
I would like to thank all of my trustees for being open to things being done
differently during this time and to each and every volunteer who has stepped up
to enable the hall to offer the services it has, you have all been amazing.
We couldn’t hold our annual Burns Night or New Year’s Eve celebrations. The
Christmas Fayre had to be reinvented as an event over most of December
providing stalls for those who would have attended the fair that people could
make purchases from at leisure thereby reducing the risk of gathering large
numbers of people for a short period of time.
The hall was also used as a
vaccination centre as the Bere
Regis surgery trialed flu
vaccinations in the community,
a very successful event that I
believe they intend repeating in
the future.

The village hall café was also
able to put on a socially
distanced Christmas lunch,
sponsored by the village shop.
The sponsorship enabled us to
Archive Photo

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