East Meon Gets New Pavilion After Fund-Raising Success

East Meon Gets New Pavilion After Fund-Raising Success

The old pavilion had to be demolished before...

...work could begin on the new one.

The almost finished article...

...and the celebrations begin

It has taken two and a half years of fund raising to accumulate the money and construct our new pavilion. When we began we thought that we would be able to get like-for-like grants but unless one is building a multi-use facility one can say bye bye to that, writes Chris Warren.

All we wanted was a new cricket pavilion so with the big grants not available it was down to us. In the first year our main fund raisers were a race night and a beer and music festival.

We had staged a race night before and knew it was fairly simple to organise.

The trick is to presell as many races, riders and horses as possible and then make sure there is plenty of alcohol available when the betting starts.

This time we added an auction of promises and with generous gifts of ‘lots’ the whole evening was a huge success both in terms of money raised and enjoyment given.

We were off to a good start. The next event was more of a leap in the dark - a beer and music festival tied in with a sixes competition.

You have to speculate to accumulate they say and the financial outlay for this extravaganza for a small club like ours (25 paying members!) was considerable with a marquee, bands, beer and food all having to be paid for before the event.

Fortunately we were blessed with good weather and the whole event was a massive triumph if a little stressful. We did the same again the following year.

We coupled these big events with smaller but still valuable fund raisers like a jumble sale, barbecues, quiz night and so on and then we sent out a begging letter to the whole parish. We were astonished by their generosity.

I am sure it helped that we were able to state that we had already raised a considerable sum ourselves. We were also lucky enough to benefit from a developer’s contribution and a couple of smaller grants.

In all we have raised £60,000 and had our official opening at the end of May.

Apart from the construction of the building’s shell all work has been done by local craftsmen and they together with those who had donated were there to help the club celebrate.

Photos also kindly supplied by Chris Warren