Community Centre building’s big birthday

Volunteer’s chair, Seamus Heffernan

Chair of the group coordinating the 200th birthday celebrations, Julie Caton

Building bicentenary

2024 will mark 200 years since our building was constructed and first used. The volunteers at the Centre have chosen to commemorate this by organising a number of initiatives and events over the course of the year. Planning has started and the Centre wants to make as many local people, as well as those once of the area but now removed, aware and to give them an opportunity to contribute.

Chair’s appeal

2024 marks the bicentenary of our building. Over those 200 years the building has served many purposes: as a chapel, a reading room, a school and eventually evolving into a multi-purpose venue for a wide range of recreational activities for the local community and beyond. 

The building is managed by a volunteer group, many of whom are organisers of those activities. They have decided to celebrate the 200 years of their building. They would like your memories of the Centre and what experiences you might have had – good or bad. What brought you there the first time? Do you remember something unusual or funny happening there? The idea is to collate such stories and any other memorabilia: photo’s, tickets, newspaper articles, etc and present them to a wider audience in the form of a publication, a digital scrapbook, an exhibition or some other appropriate showcase.

A day of celebration is planned for Saturday 22 June by which time it is hoped all material can be collated and arranged for display. So sift through your old cuttings, diaries, photo albums and assorted paraphernalia, as well as your personal memories and share them with us. Seamus Heffernan

What to do

Post material, your memories, photo’s, memorabilia, to Seamus Heffernan: The Garth, Commons Lane, Balderstone, Blackburn BB2 7LL or email seamus@mellorbrook.org or telephone him 01254 812131 or to Julie Caton: julie.caton@btinternet.com or phone her on 07542 909 677

What’s planned

On Saturday June 22 there will be an open day at the Centre when it is hoped to display material relating to the 200 years of the building, live entertainment including the Community Ukulele Group who will play a song from 1824. There will be refreshments served and a bar will be dispensing an ale brewed specially for the occasion. Other features are rather down to you and will be arranged around the ideas, materials and artifacts collated between now and then.

It is hoped that written material: recollections, anecdotes, historical information, will be assembled and made up into a viewable album, possibly in book format but at least as an online-accessible resource