Bishop Monkton Village Hall & QEII Field Chairman’s Report 22nd January 2025 by Gerald Shervington

This is my 13th Chairman’s Report and LAST!

This being my final Chairman’s Report and before I hand over the reigns, I thought that I would reflect what we have achieved together over the past 14 years.

I took over from Richard Houseman who was Chair at the time, Mervyn Beecroft was the Treasurer, Emma Oates was secretary and Isobel Wilson the Booking Coordinator and keeping things current, Barack Obama was serving his 1st term as President of the USA.

The management team changed very quickly with Lesley performing a dual role by taking over from Emma as Secretary and Isobel as Bookings coordinator, this team was then left in place for the next 10 or so years.

Over this time, we have witnessed lots of change with the Hall and the sports we offer, continuing to evolve possibly due to an aging population or maybe just going out of fashion.

I suppose if we were to measure success financially via the bank, we could say that 14 years ago we started with approximately £28,000 in the bank and we now have over £60,000 on account, so obviously we must be twice as successful and that would be the end of it.

However, as we know bank balances don’t tell the whole story.

Back in 2011 we had an active village football and cricket team, we also had a gardening club and a very active entertainments group, sadly all these have fallen by the wayside, however other clubs have formed and others have evolved to become even stronger, all the time with our new Village Hall being at the very centre of things.

We now have Pickleball – and you must ask yourself, was pickleball even invented back then? who knows, however we do have a pickleball club which is part of our Tennis Club and they both continue to flourish.

We also have a Croquet Club, one of the largest in Yorkshire, that play their very competitive games on our fields and a very active Table Tennis club that play most days in the hall.

When I took over from Richard Houseman, I said that we had passed the “building stage” and were now entering the maintenance phase for our facility, well I got that very much wrong as we have continued to grow and evolve.

We have continued to invest time and money into our facility, we now have a pavilion that we have used on numerous occasions to stage bands and other outdoor events, we have just purchased a new triple mover to cut the outfields, a roller to roll the wicket and various other items too numerous to mention, they are all housed in a purpose built external store, all financed by ourselves and at the most recent insurance renewal our insurers put a value of £2.4M on our facility.

The Village Hall over the years has had lots of help along the way, one of those being Trevor and Carol at The Lamb & Flag, it was here that we used to have the autumn auction, weekly meat raffle and our annual hog roast day. Sadly, Trevor is no longer with us and The Lamb & Flag has become residential housing, however, Gary and Lesley of The Mason’s Arms have now taken up the batten and continue the great work that Trevor and Carol started.

The village now has its very own website and whilst not strictly a village hall initiative, it was agreed by this committee to help fund the web site due to its importance within the community.

We also host the annual Rotary Bike Ride, and this I’m told generates approximately £18,000 each year for various charities throughout the Ripon community, so as you can see our hall’s influence extends outside of Bishop Monkton to Ripon and beyond.

Over the years we have also organised 14 annual hog roasts which keep raising approximately £3,000 each year to help with hall costs and concerts various fun days as well as a couple jubilees along the way.

And looking to the future we now have broadband installed, and thanks go to Phil Goodier, Matt Morrell and Mick Jackson for installing the dish just last week.

And from April this year we have the BBC visiting for 9 weeks in the form of CBBC to film one of their children’s football programmes, the income from this one booking alone equates to nearly one years turnover, and it doesn’t stop there, the film crew and production teams require accommodation over this period and various B&B’s within our village have been booked out including The Mason’s Arms, so this one event has become a huge village income stream.

And whilst talking about the BBC, I would like to personally thank all the clubs and organisations that helped make the CBBC booking happen, some by moving their busy calendars and some even moving location to other halls etc – so to all the affected clubs – a big thank you.

Moving on to our clubs

Cricket

Unfortunately, our cricket woes continued into 2024 an ultimately, due to lack of players the Bishop Monkton senior team folded. However, cricket is still to be played on our fields each week as Knaresborough 3rd’s will be playing here together with Ripley CC most Saturdays and our thanks must go to Rick Giles and David Way for the organising this.

And whilst we still have cricket playing there is always a chance a Bishop Monkton team will reform in the future.

Table Tennis

Is now in its 15 year and membership is constant at approximately 90 people split into 8 groups and playing most days.Table Tennis is a fantastic way to exercise and meet people, and there are always positions available. So, if anyone wants to join or just fancies watching with a coffee, then please speak to Martin or myself

Bowls

Significant improvements were made to the club premises at the start of the season, when all the paving surrounding the green, much of which was loose or uneven, was lifted and re-laid, this, and the purchase of a bespoke access step, improved the safety of the green for all players. Improvements were made to the electrics, members of the club cleaned and painted the shelter and, towards the end of the season, custom-made honours boards were added.

The club enjoyed an outstanding season, with 50 active members contributing to us winning the Bateson League, Harrogate Ladies’ League and Division 1 of the York Private Clubs' League. We were runners-up in the Daleman League and fielded the winning pair in the Elsdon Metcalfe competition. In parallel with these fantastic competition results, the club organised a full calendar of social bowling and friendly matches.

2024 was an eventful year for BMBC at County level with Pauline Beecroft completing her year as Ladies’ President of the Yorkshire Bowling Association.

We hosted a county match against Durham, the Ladies’ County Finals weekend, and were also chosen as the venue for 2 club inter-county matches. The club was well represented by 5 of our ladies being selected to play in the Yorkshire County League teams. Despite a cold, wet spring the weather was generally kind to us and many of our visitors complimented the condition of the green, which was indeed excellent.

Tennis and Pickleball

This has been another successful year for the club, and it continues to thrive.

There are now 3 permanent pickleball courts marked out on the multi-use games area.

Summer sessions continue three times per week with other ad-hoc games being arranged by members. The number of members has remained healthy and our sessions for the winter season in the hall are fully booked again.

They had their annual BBQ and the inaugural club pickleball tournament, both ere fun evenings and well attended, they look forward to the coming year and welcome any villagers as members in 2025 and beyond.

WI

Some excellent talks have taken place throughout the year with possibly the standout one being that of villager John Smith who spoke about running seven marathons on seven continents!

The WI diary for 2025 is already full of talks, visits and games nights already planned, if anyone would like to join this group or indeed any other group, then please speak to me and I will direct you to the right person.

Croquet

The Croquet club lawns were tremendous last year with balls running fair and true, and as a club are looking forward to the new season as always.

One notable achievement was that or Chris Higgins who made it to B level in the national finals at Poole in Dorset in September 2024 and finished a very respectable 6th!

Chris’s success and had a positive impact on the club with several players all showing promise which will hopefully lead to more visits to Poole to play in the national finals and raising the profile of the club.

Website:

Our web site has had a make-over with not only a new operating platform but also new management team consisting of Glenda Hunter, Cheryl Salmon, Paul Wade as reporters and Martin Minett and Steve Oliver as technical advisors under the leadership of Colin Philpott as editor

It's very easy to measure how important the web site is to the village and how much people value it, all we must do is look at the number of daily visits which averages 116 and the 459 pages that are viewed on average each day!

It continues to inform villagers far and wide of what is happening in the village, and I am personally delighted that the Village Hall helps support this very important group of people.

Thank you, Colin and your team, for a fantastic job.

Facebook:

I’m going to take this opportunity to thank Angela Archbold for having the inspiration for setting-up and running the village Facebook page.

Angie set-up the village Facebook page during lockdown to help people who were perhaps lonely or in need of help, it has continued to grow and has new content every day.

Indeed, I understand that one of the first things people do after moving into the village is search out our Facebook page and subscribe to it.

So, Angela, on behalf of our village, thank you.

Hog Roast

I would also like to thank Stancey Coughlin and her team of volunteer’s who have taken over the organisation of our annual Hog Roast, it was standing room only last year with crowds flocking to the centre of the village to witness plastic ducks racing down the back and not to mention pig racing!

Not only is this a great fun way of making money for our village hall but like the Burton Leonard Feast it has become an annual tradition and is part of our village DNA, and long may it continue.

Finance: 

Income and expenditure is broadly in line with expectations, we have once again seen big increases in gas and electric increases, with expenditure at £39,690, however within this figure there are a couple of exceptional items here such as the new lawn spreader at £2,000 and Ransome Triple Mower at £11,985.

This is offset against an increase in income to £30,594 which is just up on the previous year.

The result is a reduction to our reserves of £9,095 and takes our total reserves to a still healthy £60,173

No big-ticket items are anticipated this year, but you never know when you must replace a mover or some other piece of equipment, so our bank balance gives us a degree of comfort.

Thanks

As always I would like to record our appreciation to Alan Wigby who continues to ensure that our cricketers, footballers and croquet players enjoy playing on a surface second to none, to Mick Jackson, Bob Upton, John Binns, Chris Higgins and Paul Collinson for the many hours they spend up there tinkering round the hall and also on the outfield in so doing making our grounds a most beautiful and picturesque facility.

To Lesley Shervington our booking coordinator and secretary for production of our meeting minutes and letter writing and to Victoria Sargesson for running our accounts so well.

I have named but a few of the people who have helped create a most fantastic facility, the list really does go on and on, pretty much every villager has at some point helped in this success story, even if it was just down to attending a function or buying a raffle ticket at the Lamb and Flag or Mason’s Arms, however I must make one exception and that is to thank Mervyn Beecroft for without his hard work and vision we would not have the fantastic facility that we all enjoy.

Thank you

Gerald Shervington
Chairman
Bishop Monkton Village Hall & QEII Playing Field 22nd January 2025