The new pavilion at the Thursley Road Recreation Ground in Elstead was formally opened on 28 July 2006.
The completion of the pavilion marks the culmination of over nine years of effort by a dedicated band of village volunteers. The project stared in 1997, when the village cricket and football clubs, together with the Peter Pan Pre-school and the Parish Council, agreed to set up a charitable trust to replace the old and dilapidated wooden pavilion at the Thursley Road Recreation Ground. The Elstead Recreational Trust was accordingly formed in 1999 and set about the task of raising the funds for a new building. It was hoped at the time that a new pavilion would cost around £200-250,000 and that at least half the cost could be raised from national funding bodies such as the Sports Lottery Fund and the Football Foundation. How wrong we were, on both counts!
No funds were forthcoming from the national funding bodies. The Lottery Fund was not interested in funding premises for a pre-school and the Football Foundation were not prepared to fund a building which was not used at least 70% for football. When we went out to tender for the construction of the pavilion, the lowest tender came in at around £400,000 (the highest was nearly £600,000). Worse still, HM Customs refused our application for VAT exemption, which meant we would have to pay an extra 17.5% on top of the tender price!
At this point (late 2004), we were about to give up, even though we had managed to raise over £150,000 from within the village and from Waverley BC, who had generously offered £55,000. But two developments gave us the encouragement to press ahead. First, Brian Pearse and Gordon Chapman offered to take on the management of the building project themselves; they thought they could complete the ground floor part of the building for around £200,000. Second, following an appeal to a VAT tribunal, we persuaded HM Customs to change their mind and to grant us VAT-exempt status.
This still left us well short of the funds required, but we pressed ahead in the hope that once the project was underway the money would be found one way or another. We were not wrong. We started building in July 2005 and the project was largely complete by March 2006. We nearly ran out of funds several times, but we managed to raise a further £50,000 or so from within the village and borrowed another £40,000 on an interest-free basis from village residents. This gave us the £250,000 needed to complete the whole building, including the upstairs part.
We were able to do this, in record time and to a high standard of finish, only through the dedication of Brian and Gordon and through the efforts of some 40 or so volunteer workers from the cricket club, the pre-school, the football club and from the village as a whole who provided their time (and some valuable materials) free of charge to assist with the construction work. This probably saved us some £50,000 in labour costs alone.
As a result, we now have the best sports facilities probably of any village in the county, together with excellent bar and lounge areas and a purpose-built pre-school area which also serves as an popular venue for village events and social functions. The building is also a most attractive barn-type structure which does much to enhance the visual amenity of the Recreation Ground area.
Well done Elstead.
Pat Murphy
Secretary, Elstead Recreational Trust