Where
did we come from?
Following
the formation of the Folk House Association in 1977, groups of members got
together on a weekly basis, attending various organised activities such as
art class, pottery, local history, wine making and gardening to name just
a few. It was felt that it would be a good idea to set up a social
section within the Association for members to get together after their
classes to discuss and organise various events along with the odd glass of
beer or two.
There
was also another advantage with having a social section - an opportunity
to raise additional revenue to support the Association funds and offset
some of the annual costs incurred.
The
Social Section was Born
A
small room on the ground floor was converted into a bar area and a feature
’brick built’ fire place was built. An even smaller room was
converted to a cellar which would hold just two/three barrels of beer and
the beer pipes to the new bar area had to be cut through 30 inch's of
stone work and then laid under flag stones into the bar servery.
A
bar committee was set up to manage the bar and arrange for the purchase of
drinks.
The
bar was staffed by members who gave up their evening on a voluntary basis
each evening of the week, and lunch times on weekends, but it was
important to check the 'bar rota' before leaving to see if a member had
volunteered to open the bar for the next session. Success brought its own
problems, as the turnover increased so did the work load and with a
greater workload, members who gave their time were thinning out, we were
slowly moving from voluntary support to paid staff. Paid staff would
overcame the problem of not knowing if the bar would be open, but we were
still some years away from this option because turnover at that time would
not support paid staff.
The
bar went from strength to strength and it was soon recognised that the
facilities were not big enough to cater for the continuing expansion and
meetings were held to discuss alternative proposals, one of these
proposals we enjoy today; another, put forward by an aging member, was
very interesting, they say hind sight is a wonderful thing... His proposal
was put forward in the late seventies to convert the entire ground floor
of the house to a 'social section'. I leave it to the members to
think this one through, and who knows....
