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TO me, the building is the Parish Hall,
Nantwich's version of church halls throughout the land where the
congregation of the parish church - and others - hold secular
events. It is the name by which I have always known it, although I
was aware that some people called it Church House and the Church
Hall.
The church's magazine, This
Month, calls it the Parish Hall.
The town-centre venue for
church events as well as a wide range of events that have nothing to
do with St Mary's Church, it has been called the Parish Rooms in
recent years. Parish Hall, Parish Rooms? Near enough.
But I had to chuckle at an
item in a local newspaper at the end of the month when a few
paragraphs in the news briefs column announced that the 100
(Nantwich) Squadron, Air Training Corps, were to hold a coffee morning in
"Nantwich Tea Rooms." I had never heard or seen it called that before! It
gave the building the air of a watering hole for visitors to the
town, but, as you can see, it is not the quaint building normally
associated with the name of tea rooms.
For website visitors who do
not know the building, the castellated protrusion on the left is the
staircase to the first floor, and the glassed area is the
all-weather front entrance to a hall-cum-small meeting area. Behind
the window next to that is a kitchen, while the rest of the ground
floor is the Church Office - formerly Nantwich Tourist Information
Centre - with a separate entrance.
(People were dumbfounded
when the TIC left this easy-to-find town centre location to move to
the Civic Hall several hundred yards away round a corner. The TIC
operates under the auspices of Cheshire East Council - Crewe and
Nantwich Borough Council at the time of the move - who own the Civic
Hall and it made financial sense to cut costs by consolidating
council activities into one building.)
The upper storey of the
Parish Hall has a small entrance hall/large landing (over the glass-fronted extension)
and a large room for all sorts of activities. This room has what
used to be a minstrels' gallery high in one wall but this was closed
in with a wall and is now - as I recall - used for storage.
The Parish Hall is run by
Trustees who see to things such as keeping the building in good
order, and there is a Parish Hall manager who sees to the day-to-day
running of it. The many bookings - some regular, some one-offs,
which include coffee mornings on at least two days of every week -
are handled by the Church Office personnel. |
