(On the corner of Hollingsworth Road & Montgomery
Avenue, Lowestoft)
The
Gunton Estate Residents Meeting Hall – known today as the Gunton
Estate Community Hall and still called by many as the Tenants Hall
– was built by Lowestoft Borough Corporation and opened in the
early months of 1956. It remains the estate’s only secular
community facility.
The
Gunton Estate itself was originally laid out in 1945, in the months
immediately following the Second World War. It was constructed as
part of Lowestoft’s rebuilding programme after extensive enemy
attacks on the town from 1940 to 1944. Like other council built
estates of the time, it was never built as a “working class” estate
but seen as the start of a new era. Its houses were built to a high
standard, and although the prefabs and “Orlit” houses have now long
gone, the brick houses themselves remain as a now-lost beacon to
the idea of a brand new, healthier world.
The
Gunton Estate Residents Meeting Hall was part of that ideal. The
first of its type in East Anglia, the years following the Hall’s
opening saw beetle-drives, dances, a “Darby and Joan” club
(equivalent to today’s Autumn Leisure Club), and before the era of
television, Tuesday and Wednesday Gunton Estate Cinema Clubs for
the community’s children. Teenage dances took place at weekends,
which in the days of the Corporation buses, even attracted
youngsters from across the bridge.
New houses replaced the prefabs in the 1960’s and
the Hall also expanded to meet the growing population.
However, communities were changing; the motor car and
television changed people’s habits so much so that many tended
to stay at home. Although some clubs survived, others became
defunct through falling numbers. By 1999 only the short-mat
bowls club, the Old-Age Pensioners’ club and the twice-weekly
Bingo and Social Club survived.
The
dramatic decline of the town’s major employers between 1987 and
1995 affected every family on the estate. The Hall continued in
use, but there was little community involvement compared
with its earlier days. The building
also began to have a neglected feel about it.
Improvements began following the involvement of Gunton
Estate Tenant & Residents Association members, Ann Hubbard and
Ian Robb, on the Hall’s management committee. Not only did they
push to repair the building but vowed to return it to the wider
community of the estate.
It
has taken nearly ten years to reach this objective. Spearheaded by
Ann Hubbard, who is now the Hall’s caretaker and voluntary
coordinator, she remains committed to the continuation of the Hall
as a community asset. Today, as the Gunton Estate Community Hall,
it is a well used and vital part of the locality for which is was
originally built.
It has also benefited from ‘Lowestoft Together’ funding. Now much
improved, the Hall has gas central heating; a new ‘Lowestoft
Together’ funded kitchen and storage cupboards, and is in constant
use six days of the week. In keeping with the community camaraderie
created by the ‘Lowestoft Together’ project the Yard was also
involved in the building of the Hall’s new shed.