GREAT BRICKHILL CRICKET CLUB
THE STORY BEHIND THE BUILDING OF THE CLUB PAVILION
Editor’s Note: This article was placed in the Millennium Time Capsule set in the Three Trees ‘garden’ outside the Old Red Lion in 2000.
In the 1990s, or on in the twenty-first century, when cricket will surely still be played at Great Brickhill, there will be those who, with drink in hand, will be interested to learn, from an account written at the time, the story behind the building of this club pavilion. Our final contribution, therefore, is to leave in permanent form this short account to add to the history of a club already approaching its centenary year.
A pavilion, to replace the old wooden shack that used to stand at the far end of the ground near the entrance to the spinney, had been a talking point in the club for many years. Right up until 1973, when the Club’s bank balance stood at £177, it seemed likely to remain only a talking point.
Over the next four years the Club worked seriously to increase its funds, and by the Annual General Meeting early in 1977 the Treasurer reported a working balance of just under £3,000. During this period several forms of building were discussed. They included the erection of a prefabricated building, and the re-erection of a surplus store room offered to the Club by a Bletchley motor company. Both ideas were eventually discarded, and a club member, Alan Goldsmith, designed the present building.
Unfortunately the period between 1973 and 1977 was one of severe inflation, and the Club found its increasing funds being eroded by rising costs. The preliminary costings for the pavilion indicated that it would need at least £10,000 to adequately erect and equip a worthwhile facility. In short, the Club was well on its way to becoming the most affluent in the area but also the only Club in the area without a pavilion.
It really all started to come right when Mac Head got squashed by a horse! Encouraged by an unsympathetic club captain, Mike Turner, who suggested that in his condition Mac might as well spend his time recovering in some useful occupation like building a pavilion, Mac agreed, provided he could persuade John Betts and Norman Hinton to join him. Several beers later that unlikely combination of talent – a pig farmer, a master farrier and a charter secretary – volunteered their services. The Executive committee authorised Club monies to be spent to the Club’s best advantage and the building committee was born.
Our approach was essentially pragmatic – the dictionary used to be kept behind the bar! We planned the project in twenty phases, the first eight of which it was anticipated would exhaust Club funds but provide a wind-and-waterproof shell by the end of the 1977 playing season. The speed with which the remaining phases – essentially the whole of the interior building and fittings – could be undertaken, would then depend upon future availability of funds.
The first sod – no, not the building committee! – was cut on a wet and windy Saturday early in April. Work progressed steadily throughout the summer, and by the end of the season our first target had been achieved, and sufficient funds remained to begin further phases.
At that time grants from public authorities were hard to obtain, but a combination of fully documented requests and practical evidence of serious intent to erect a worthwhile building brought £100 (the maximum permitted grant) from Bucks Playing Fields Association, and a grant of £936 from the Sports Council. Even more encouraging was the fact that Aylesbury Vale District Council, with only £1,000 available for allocation to sports projects throughout the county during 1977, and despite there being six other applicants, decided to make the Club a grant of £600.
One of the most satisfying features for us was the support given, and the interest shown, within the village. Many major items of building materials or equipment were either donated to the Club or provided to the building committee at a nominal cost. It would be embarrassing for those concerned to be catalogued by name, but they included playing members, vice-presidents and a number of people with little or no previous connection with the Club. Their anonymity does not lessen the debt owed by Club members, past and present, nor make our thanks any less sincere.
On completion the building was immediately insured, on the advice of the Club’s brokers, for the sum of £12,500. The cost to the Club of building and equipping it, as shown in Club accounts, was marginally over £5,400. The difference between these two figures represented the extent of Club self-help, and also the generosity of its many friends and supporters. The ceiling in the lounge in which you stand cost £5 and a pig, and it is not surprising that the Treasurer confessed, when the project was complete, to having learned a lot about accountancy that he had never been taught professionally!
There was no formal opening, but the Club began to use its new home at the beginning of the 1978 playing season. The first pint of beer was drawn on Saturday 29 April. Our good friends and old cricket rivals from Leighton Buzzard Cricket Club presented the Club with the clock, so when the bar steward calls “Time Please” you will now know who to blame.