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Rear/East facing elevation of the Ayton
Community Hall before the refurbishment |
You can find Ayton Community Hall up the vennel next
to what was the Black Bull pub on the High Street. It’s only been the
Community Hall since the end of March 2008. Prior to that, the hall
was owned by Ayton and Burnmouth Church. The Church was finding the
upkeep of the hall quite difficult and planned to sell it at some
point. A group of local villagers became aware of this and decided
that, if possible, it should be purchased and upgraded to benefit
the whole community.
A village meeting was called in February 2005 and at
that meeting Ayton Community Hall Association (ACHA) was
formed. A
committee took on the job of organising the
Association, with the long term task of creating a ‘small but modern
centrally situated hall’. The Church agreed to sell the hall to the
Association for a nominal £100, but it took around three years to
sort out various legal and ownership matters, but now the hall
belongs to the Association.
In those three years the Association became a
Scottish Charity (SC 037032) and the committee set about thinking how best to
develop the hall as well as embarking on a fund raising programme.
The first ideas for the hall involved building a larger one on
ground at the rear and incorporating the existing building, but
after an application from the Lottery Fund was rejected it was
decided it would be more realistic to modernise the building within
the existing walls. This is was was done and the work was completed
in the spring of 2011.
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