Clondrohid’s beloved hall set for relaunch after 45 years as ‘focal point’ of community
SPOKE TO FOUR VOLUNTEERS WHO HAVE BEEN HEAVILY INVOLVED IN THE HALL OVER THE YEARS
Over forty five years after its construction, Clondrohid Community Hall is still going strong and providing a place for young and old residents of the locality to gather, hold events and participate in a whole variety of activities.
After experiencing a renewal of sorts in recent years, the hall’s committee is due to hold a relaunch in the coming weeks and ahead of this, some of those who have been most involved in the facility over the years told The Corkman of the role it has played in the community.
Local man Sean White, now 85, said that the late Teddy Healy was the “main instigator” behind the push to get the hall built in Clondrohid after the area’s existing hall, established by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, had fallen into “a very bad state”.
Led by Mr Healy and the late John Finn, who was the parish priest at the time, a group of locals came together in 1977 and decided that they would build a new hall on to Clondrohid National School so that it could be used by its pupils as well as the wider community.
From there, the group began to hold collections to fund the hall’s construction. Money for it also came from the parish, and businesses supplying goods to the area made donations too.
While Noel C Duggan’s company was contracted to supply and put up the steelwork for the facility, it was largely thanks to the free labour of Sean and other locals on nights and weekends that the hall was built over the course of 1978, with whatever materials they could afford.
“There was no money that time, it was all voluntary work. We had 12 or 14 involved in it and they all worked hard on it,” Sean explained.
“We didn’t use anything expensive as is being done today. We put down an oak floor in the hall ourselves, night after night, at that time.”
Despite his hard work on the hall, Sean did not reap too much immediate benefit from the building in a personal sense as he left Clondrohid for work in Mallow in February 1979, although he did return for the hall’s official opening later that year.
Still, he played a big part in bringing the weekly 45 card drive to the hall, which was a “huge” event at the time.
“When I went to Mallow there were card drives in a lot of the halls around Mallow town and Mourneabbey and Twopothouse and I told Teddy Healy in Clondrohid that they should start a card drive and that started in 1980,” Sean explained.
“There’d be six at a table playing cards and in Clondrohid there was up to 35 tables every Sunday night playing cards.”
Sean, who returned to Clondrohid in 2010 and is now part of the active retirement group who use the since refurbished hall, which he describes as “beautiful”, said that along with pantomimes, the card drives were by far the most popular events being held in the hall in those days.
Proinnsias Creedon got involved in Clondrohid Hall’s committee in 1993, taking up the role of outgoing treasurer Martha Manning, and he told The Corkman that the card drive, running every Sunday from November to the June Bank Holiday, was still the hall’s biggest event at that time.
Along with collections held across the county, Proinnsias said the income raised from these well-attended functions had initially served to lower the reasonable debt incurred from the hall’s construction.
“You could have up to 60 or 70 tables a night for the card drive in the hall,” Proinnsias explained.
“Quite often, they used the primary school next door to accommodate the card drives and around Christmas time they’d have the two bigger card drives where there would be turkeys and hampers and all sorts of prizes. They’d have a marquee to accommodate the crowd.
“But as the years have gone by the numbers playing cards have dwindled away steadily and gradually all the time but that said, the card drive was still a huge income for the hall for the year.”
There were other events held in the hall too, including weekly GAA bingo, set dancing, drama and a Christmas Bazaar which was held every December 8 in aid of the National School and the hall.
As time went on, Proinnsias explained, these events faded away but other activities like art classes, meetings and birthday parties took their place at the hall, which he said was always admired by those visiting from other parishes.
“The hall was always the envy of other people in other parishes, ‘How did ye get that kind of hall, how are ye maintaining it?’ Proinnsias said.
“It was the focal point, it was something that the community were involved in building, it was there for their use,” he explained.
“We used to be saying ‘The hall is there, we want it to be used.’ It was going to cost the same thing to upkeep and maintain the hall whether it was used four, five, six nights a week or whether it was in use two nights a week.”
Proinnsias, who recently retired from the hall’s committee after 30 years, said that while there was never a real lull in activity in the facility, the Covid-19 pandemic did affect the amount of events taking place there and the once thriving card drive has yet to start up again, with many elderly people now weary of spending time at gatherings.
That the hall is still going strong is perhaps testament to its ‘new’ committee, who injected a “fresh impetus” to the facility when they took over the reins from many long-time servants in 2018.
“A share of new people came in, there’s a lot of work gone into the hall since,” Proinnsias explained.
“It goes in cycles a bit, you need new people to come on to bring new ideas, to bring new thinking, to drive it on further you know.”
One of the ‘new people’ who joined the hall’s committee six years ago was Peter Lane, who took up the role of chairperson back then and is now vice-secretary.
Peter told The Corkman that the committee acknowledged back then that many old halls like the one in Clondrohid were in danger of deteriorating because they were difficult to fund and maintain. To ensure it would stay open, the committee decided that several issues had to be addressed.
“We started forming an action plan and our mission statement was to provide a place that was safe, dry and warm, simple as that,” Peter said.
He explained that since then, around €200,000, much of which was gained through grants from the County Council and the local IRD, has been spent on installing new insulation, lighting, wiring, a heating system, kitchen and other measures to the hall.
This funding could not have been procured, Peter explained, without the help of committee members and locals who are adept at securing loans and grants, which can sometimes be difficult for a community facility.
“We’ve been very lucky in that we’ve something like 12 or 14 committed people on our committee and others from other groups that are willing to get stuck in, give their advice,” Peter explained.
Though there is a small debt to be paid off after all the work done, Peter explained that the hall is continuing to charge a “minimal amount” to encourage people to make use of it.
“We want to encourage the education and the training of the youth and then the older people in our community, that they have the ability to come there and socialise not at a prohibitive cost,” Peter explained.
Along with community events, the hall is also being regularly used for commercial and charity activities according to Peter, who is content with the work he and the other committee members have done on the hall in recent years.
“It’s a thriving community facility and we’ve just a little more to go before we can say we’ve our job done as the committee at that stage,” he said.
“We don’t want to make it a facility like a hotel, we don’t want to make it anything anymore than it was intended to, which was a community place where people go to meet, have fun, talk, learn something, at a very low cost.”
The foreseeable future of the hall will be guided by newly elected chairperson Alan O’Riordan, who is only 28 but is as familiar as anyone with how the facility operates, having participated in the drama and dancing classes it hosted when he was growing up and later teaching classes there as an adult.
Alan was one of the cohort who joined the hall’s committee in 2018, when he was immediately elected as vice-chairman, and now as the person heading the group he said he wants to push the hall on again following the impact that Covid-19 had on many of its events.
“We’d love to see it be a busy place that people associate as a great facility to use,” Alan said.
“I suppose we’ve a lot of that work done and now it’s just a matter of keeping the place and looking after the place.
“The place is safe and we just hope that it will be used and it will be of more benefit to different sorts of groups that we can cater for all sorts of activities.”