Built as a church hall in 1937, at a cost of £500, for which
£200 was raised and £300 borrowed from the diocese, it was, at 72
ft. long by 26 ft. wide the largest in the Halesworth district. It
was opened on Thursday 25th
November 1937, by Lord Alastair Graham, in the presence of about
250 residents of Rumburgh and St. Michael South Elmham.
The prime mover in the venture had been the popular vicar, the
Rev. David Stewart, who had made many improvements in the social
life of the parish since his induction in 1933. “I had made up my
mind there would be a church hall if I had to build it brick by
brick, tile by tile, myself”, he declared during the opening
ceremony.
Originally of timber construction, with a pitched roof and
concrete rendered walls, a flat roof extension was added in later
years, along its entire length, consisting of a committee room,
kitchen, toilets and bar.
What’s in a name –
Rumburgh
The village of Rumburgh, between Halesworth and Bungay, has a
name that takes us back to the darkest of the Dark Ages and the
wars that plagued East Anglia in the ninth and tenth centuries.
The key is the second part of the name, burgh, that will be
familiar from hundreds of British place names – though it comes in
slightly different forms and spellings: Edinburgh, Burstead,
Canterbury, to give just a few examples from the many dotted around
the islands.
Burgh, Bury, Bur and even Burh, all meant ‘stronghold’ and
demonstrates that here at one point and presumably still somewhere
under the soil, there was a defensive structure.
Now Suffolk has several ‘fort’ names, including Aldeburgh, ‘the
Old Fort’ and ‘Bury St Edmunds’, the Fort of St Edmund.
But Rumburgh is the only Suffolk fort name that tells us about
the fabric of the building, for ‘rum’ derives from the antique
English word ‘hrun’ or as we would say, ‘tree trunk’.
Rumburgh, then, was the Tree Trunk Fort and when we want to
think of it in its heyday, we should think of oak and beech and
willow, laced together against the guile and might of the
enemy.