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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 pebbledashed walls, a flat roof, brick walled extension was added in the 1970's, along three quarters of its length, consisting of a kitchen, toilets and bar. The committee room was added in the 1980's, which completed the extension along its entire length.
After leaking for a number of years, during which time several attempts had been made to patch it up, the hall was completely re-roofed in 2011 at a cost of £36,438. This was made possible by a grant of £17,625 having been obtained from Suffolk Environmental Trust, combined with the proceeds of local fundraising that had taken place over a number of years.
In 2012 the kitchen and bar were completely re-fitted and redecorated, together with the committee room and toilets, the kitchen units, cooker, dishwasher and washroom equipment having been donated from Halesworth Middle School, following its closure.
The windows in the main hall, together with most of the exterior doors were replaced in 2012. The original internal walls in the main hall, being of thin compressed paper board, were replaced with plaster board in 2014.
Rumburgh & St. Michael Village Hall Management Committee became a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) on the 17th January 2017, registered charity number 1171160. Ownership of the hall was transferred to the CIO on the 16th April 2019, the property being held in permanent endowment.
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.