Article by Adrian Morgan, incorporating historical notes by Steph Bennell.
The history of Saint Michael’s rooms – now replaced by the new Castle Community Rooms1 – goes back 130 years. It was purchased from Norwich firm Bolton and Paul in 1890 by then Rector, Reverend H C O Pilkington out of his own money. Bolton and Paul manufactured various goods in timber, including aircraft and also a variety of buildings generally in kit form. They commenced the manufacture of kit buildings in 1880 and aircraft in 1915.
St Michaels Rooms was one of the larger buildings, measuring 70 feet long by 30 feet wide as shown in the excerpt from their catalogue. At the time it would have cost £250 including the floor with an option to have it erected for the princely sum of £29. As supplied it was clad in green galvanised corrugated iron but that was stripped off, probably in the 1950s, and the exterior rendered. It was located on the present site of Castle Community Rooms which was then part of the rectory grounds and its purchase was recorded in the 1891 Lamberts Family Almanac.
In the almanac its use is recorded as being for Mothers Union meetings and the Sunday school but another of its early uses was additional accommodation for the Mills Grammar School and it was known as the Iron School Room. When Reverend Pilkington passed away, in 1949, the PCC paid his family £210 to purchase it from them.
In the early 1900s the rooms were used for a wide variety of social events, important meetings and other activities, particularly during the First World War and in 1959 it was reported that the rooms were booked morning noon and night for dances, socials, whist drives, jumble sales and bingo. The Saturday night bingo attracted more than 200 people and these bookings funded a variety of improvements including a kitchen refurbishment, chairs and replacement metal framed windows. In 1966 the Mills Grammar School again rented the rooms for three years on condition that a 14′ x 12′ store was built, which was probably the wing that was on the south side of the building. In 1968 another extension was built on the north side as a committee room. In the 70s the rooms acquired a music, singing and dancing licence but complaints were made about the level of sound emanating from the building and in 1973, following a demand by the police that action be taken, an electronic noise control system and shutters were installed over the windows on the south (church) side.
In the late 1970s it was clear that the management of Saint Michaels rooms required more resources than was available from the PCC in addition to all its other work and a management committee was formed comprising Adrian Morgan (chairman) Paul Briscoe (maintenance), Stanley Baines (bookings) and Eric Billingham (treasurer). Although with individual responsibilities, working together the committee carried out improvements themselves where specific skills such as flooring were not required.
Agreement was reached with the PCC that its finances would be managed by the committee allowing them to re-invest income in improvements and maintenance and over the next few years the building was significantly improved with a new floor (the playgroup was complaining about their children suffering from splinters from the old one) a false ceiling with fluorescent lights, central heating for the main hall and committee room, a facelift for the kitchen and improvements to the ladies toilets. Income also paid for replacement of the galvanised roof and external redecoration. Some painting work was carried out by offenders serving community service orders but it was clearly difficult for their supervisors to keep them wholly motivated!
When the Mills Grammar School closed and was demolished, the committee approached the people in charge of the site and secured the gas boiler and controls at no charge for the installation of the heating in Saint Michaels rooms. It was subsequently discovered that the people who gave the boiler did not have the authority to do it as it belongs to the demolition contractors but by then it was too late as it had already been installed in St Michael’s rooms so the gift remained.
In the late 80s and early 90s the members of the committee changed, Geoff Pickup joined the committee but, with the advent of the disability discrimination act in 1995 and the uncertainty as to whether the lack of accessible facilities would result in the PCC being prosecuted, St Michael’s rooms was closed. At that time it was anticipated that it would be replaced by a new community building which was the focus of a significant amount of effort. However, that project did not reach fruition and in about 2000, a team comprising mainly Graham Owen, the new Rector, John and Imogen Sheeran and David Drummond worked to reopen St Michael’s rooms for the benefit of the community and gradually bookings returned although not to the level they were before closure. Andrew Lovejoy took on the role as treasurer. Most notably John Sheeran used St Michael’s rooms for his excellent series of lectures on art.
St Michaels Rooms gained international fame as the Danebury Scout Hall which was the base for the Danebury Detectorists featured in the BBC series “The Detectorists”.
The committee room, which had been used by the Framlingham Baptist’s, was totally refurbished as a parish office avoiding the need for the rectory to be used for all church business. In January 2017 high quality redundant kitchen units were offered to the Rooms. Adrian Morgan and Victor Finch with some other assistance gutted the old kitchen, repaired the rotting floor and installed the new units. These were in use for less than 5 years (less Covid!) until demolition, but the building contract stated that they were to be safely removed, stored and installed in the new building. Although not a catering kitchen, the kitchen in Castle Community Rooms attracts admiration from users.
Fast forward to 2018 and the Framlingham town Council approached the PCC to see whether, if they were able to secure funds, they would be able to assist with refurbishment of Saint Michaels rooms. The PCC commissioned a chartered surveyor to inspect the building but the lack of maintenance during that period of closure had caused structural issues with the timber frame and its energy performance was well below comparable modern buildings. He prepared a schedule of recommended works but the cost of these, estimated by a local reputable builder, would be between £400,000 and half £1 million.
Even with all this work carried out the PCC would still have the same building and an ongoing maintenance liability. It was therefore concluded that the best option would be to demolish the existing building and build a new purpose-built building suitable for both church and community activities. To reflect the wide use by the town, the new building would be called the “Castle Community Rooms”.
On this basis Framlingham town council engaged with local architects and James Gorst architects produced a concept design which is the basis of the current Castle Community rooms.
Framlingham town Council secured £700,000 district community infrastructure levy funding and the intention was that the town council would own the building and lease the land from the PCC. However, after a series of discussions it was decided that the best option would be for the PCC to own the building on its own land and East Suffolk Council agreed to transfer the grant to the PCC. A project team comprising the Rector, Mark Sanders, Jeremy Schofield, formerly director of planning and leisure for Suffolk coastal district Council, Peter Smith a chartered surveyor and Adrian Morgan a chartered engineer was formed. With a more developed design from the architects the project team engaged Hyams, a local quantity surveyor to cost the design which would be about £1.2 million. Clearly this was far in excess of the £700,000 available from East Suffolk Council.
The Framlingham town Council contributed £126,000 from the local community infrastructure levy funds and the project team assisted by a small fundraising group set about raising the remaining amount of money. The generosity of the members of St Michael’s church and people associated with it contributed about £150,000, a friends group was set up to which people contributed a monthly amount of money and the balance was raised mainly from Grant bodies with the assistance of Chris East, a local professional fundraiser. These grants ranged from a few thousand pounds to nearly £100,000 from the National Lottery community fund.
In the middle of all of this the Covid epidemic brought most things to a standstill and once again St Michael’s rooms had to be closed so cutting off its income supply. Although Covid slowed progress, work was still able to continur on the project to replace it with Castle community rooms thanks to the copious use of Zoom online conferencing.
Under the guidance of the quantity surveyor, four companies were selected to submit tenders for the demolition of St Michael’s rooms and construction of Castle Community rooms and these were all interviewed in June 2021. Of these, Seamans builders was selected as the preferred contractor. Finalisation of the design and refinement of the costs were undertaken in co-ordination between the Architect, Quantity Surveyor and Seamans Building. Although still £200,000 short of the target, the PCC took the bold decision in November 2021 to sign the contract for the project as, post Covid, costs were rising sharply and the contractor had agreed to hold their tender price until January 2022. If this decision has not been taken costs would have prevented the project progressing at all.
Work commenced on 17 January 2022 with the demolition of St Michaels rooms.
Some artefacts had been removed as the fundraising group, with the assistance of Clark and Simpson, had organised an auction of items related to the Detectorists television programme. These included the squeaky doors which were actually bought by The Detectorists film company for use in a later program. The auction raised over £9000. Managing the finances was somewhat nerve wracking but fortunately grants just kept pace with bills. Several grant bodies, including the National Lottery Community Fund were more willing to make grant contributions when they could see good progress on the building rather than funding a project it was still on paper and which was not “out of the ground”. Several representatives of the grant bodies visited and they gained confidence that Castle Community Rooms would be delivered to time and to price and they would not be seen to be funding a project which could become in difficulty.
Although occupying basically the same footprint as St Michael’s rooms, Castle Community Rooms offers vastly improved facilities over St Michaels rooms although some of its features have been designed into the new building such as a sprung hall floor suitable for dancing, dance and exercise classes, and an acoustically treated ceiling to replicate the acoustics of St Michael’s rooms which was judged by singing groups to be ideal for their purposes. The new building includes a meeting room which can be used separately from the main hall with a separate tea point as well as a kitchen, accessible toilet and an admin/parish office.
The new building was handed over to the PCC on 6 January 2023 less than two years after the commencement of demolition of St Michael’s rooms and the first group to hire the building was the Framlingham Bridge club on 9th January. Since then the number of users and bookings has steadily grown and it has become a very popular space to hire and an excellent resource for the town. The building has been designed to be very energy efficient which is assisted by roof mounted solar panels and, although the entire building is now heated as opposed to just the hall for Saint Michaels rooms, the consumption of gas is over one third less than it was for St Michaels rooms and electricity is a quarter less although there is now car park flood lighting. Noise management is still an issue and a modern noise limiting device has been installed to help to manage this. Additional facilities include a projector and audiovisual system for which the vaulted ceiling provides adequate height for a large drop-down screen.
Although ultimately the responsibility of the PCC as the owning charity, management of Castle community rooms is undertaken by a management committee drawn from local volunteers and members of the PCC. The management committee is able to act autonomously within a remit agreed with the PCC.