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Poulton Community Hall

Built in 1925 in the Arts and Crafts style, the Hall has had several names, including St Chad’s Church Hall and Vicarage Park Community Centre, but despite name changes it has always been the heart and soul of Poulton-le-Fylde. It sits next to a long-established tennis club and the manicured greenery of Jean Stansfield Memorial and Vicarage Park. The hall was first opened by Dr William Temple, Bishop of Manchester, on Armistice Day, 1925.

In February of that year, members of St Chad’s Church had formed a committee to plan for a new hall. One of the members was Alderman William Hodgson JP (later chairman of Lancashire Education Committee), who gave his name to Lancashire’s first mixed secondary school in 1932 and spent many years providing joy to the local community through its programme of events and activities.

But the building looked doomed in 2013. A damning surveyor’s report listed major structural problems, and St Chad’s church council members felt unable to meet the repair costs and sadly, demolition was on the cards.

Thanks to years of dedicated campaigning by the local community of Poulton, in 2014 an agreement was made with Blackburn Diocese to lease the hall to a new community trust: the Vicarage Park Community Centre, which raised tens of thousands of pounds and saved the building. There was much work, which included rebuilding the stair tower and rear gable wall, reinforcing the original iron framework, replacing plumbing and wiring and redecorating inside and out.

By July 2018, the hall was renovated. Today there is a full programme of theatre, music, dance and comedy, and it is home to the theatre group The Chaddeans, who regularly put on a great show.