From hut to hub: how Moorsley rebuilt its community heart
Moorsley, a former mining village in the North East of England, is one of three communities that form the 3 Together Big Local area. Over the years, the community had lost many of its shared spaces, including the village hall. But with the help of Big Local funding, a group of residents was determined to change things – and breathe new life into the Moorsley Hut.
When the Big Local programme began in 2011, the 150 areas chosen to receive funding were amongst the 20 per cent most deprived on the Index of Multiple Deprivation.
They also lacked civic assets, including those places where people meet, share ideas, tell stories and make friends – which in many areas had disappeared over time and were never replaced.
I felt this sense of social injustice … Everything had been taken out of the area and nothing had been put back.”
Jacky Worthington
The people who live in these areas often became more isolated and less active, with everything good about the community spoken of in the past tense.
The village of Moorsley became a case in point. It is one of three communities (along with Easington Lane and Peat Carr) that make up 3 Together Big Local. They lie within the Sunderland local authority area, on the boundary between Tyne and Wear and County Durham.
Like so many places in this part of the world, Moorsley was a thriving mining community. In 1927, the Low Moorsley Village Hall first opened its doors. It was built by the North Hetton Coal Co. and was paid for, in part, by miners’ subscriptions.
The hall closed in 2003 and was later demolished, due to a number of structural issues. It was yet another symbol of how the area had changed, and not for the better. Until – step forward a group of Moorsley residents determined to reverse the trend of losing their local amenities.
Losing the village hall
That group included Jacky Worthington.
“I felt this sense of social injustice,” Jacky says. “We don’t have shops, we haven’t got a church, there used to be a school but that closed some years ago, along with two pubs. Everything had been taken out of the area and nothing had been put back.
“There was nowhere for people to socialise, nowhere for the kids to have any activities, and people weren’t meeting each other regularly. The council had pledged to replace [the Village Hall] with a new community hub but that was reliant on new homes being delivered, only for that plan to fall through.”
The council then considered selling the site but couldn’t because it was classed as a community asset. Then, in 2010, a lottery-funded programme called Neighbourhood Challenge was set up, where groups could apply for £30,000 grants to support community-minded projects.
Taking back the site
The residents’ association put forward a successful proposal to take over the site from the council and used that £30K to install a Portakabin on the site of the old Village Hall, which then became known as the Hut.
“Once we took over the site, we created a ‘peace garden’,” Jacky adds. “Before we did that there wasn’t a war memorial in Moorsley for people to attend on 11 November, and there was nothing here to recognise or commemorate the memories of the people who died in the coal mine located in the field next door.”
Peace Garden memorial in Moorsley.
Getting organised
Given the lack of investment into Moorsley, there was understandable excitement when the community became part of the Big Local programme in 2012 – residents could decide how money was being spent on the community.
Being a resident-led programme means that Big Local areas will have a much better understanding of the needs and issues within a community. However, it takes time for any Big Local to gather momentum and to get the right people in place to make things happen, because it is mostly run by volunteers.
Funding the new hut
3 Together also had to consider the needs of each community.
“Having that money and being able to choose how to spend it is a blessing, but the challenge is being able to spend it in a way that keeps everybody happy,” explains 3 Together Project Officer, David Carnaffan.
“3 Together covers thousands of households (approximately 7,000), so you’ve got thousands of different ideas of how to spend a million over 10 years. It’s about being able to pick the ideas that lots of people collectively want to see happen.”
Along with other projects that 3 Together has supported – including a community transport scheme and a skate park – a community hub in Moorsley was definitely an idea that lots of people wanted to see happen.
3 Together committed £191,500 towards a permanent building to replace the Hut. It was a pivotal moment in helping to build momentum and convince other organisations to support the project, and Jacky also helped to secure £35,000 from the local housing association. But her work was far from done.
Challenges and setbacks
“Yeah, there’s been various ‘milestones’ along the way, if you can call it that! The council hadn’t registered the site properly, so half of the land belonged to farmers. So, we had to sort out adverse possession proceedings. Then we had a contamination issue with asbestos (from the old building).”
During COVID-19, not only was work delayed but the cost of materials kept going in one direction. “All the while I was thinking, ‘we can’t fail with this’. I don’t know what I’ll do if we get this far and it doesn’t work out.’ The weight of expectation and of letting people down was really quite strong.”
3 Together wasn’t just there for financial support. “Our board members also provided emotional support to Jacky and the other volunteers who helped to get the Hut built,” explains 3 Together’s Emma Crow. “We gave advice when it came to filling out documents, doing paperwork and applying for grants.”
Project Officer, David Carnaffan, gives a presentation on the legacy of 3 Together Big Local. Photo: Local Trust/Ryan Herman
Creating sustainable community organisations
On 2 April 2024, Moorsley Hut held its grand opening. “It was a very emotional day,” says Jacky. “There’s been a group of us who have been together for around a dozen years now and who worked to make this happen.”
They even got a legendary music producer to turn up for the event. Trevor Horn grew up in the area and his cousin is the local mayor.
“Apparently Trevor had been following us as a group on our Facebook page regularly. He was on a visit to England before the completion of the building, came up here and drove past it to see what was going on. He really wanted to be part of the opening,” Jacky says.
While the Hut recently celebrated its first birthday, 3 Together completed their Big Local journey in February.
“For me, the really important thing is that community organisations who are here now become sustainable, that they continue to be able to offer something for the community after we’re gone,” says David.
“What we’ve done quite recently is provide another large grant for the Hut to install solar panels. It is a relatively cheap building to run and will become even cheaper. I hope the building will stand as a monument to Big Local in this area.”
The Hut has become a home for a diverse range of groups and events including a community choir, ukelele lessons, traditional crafts, weekly yoga, plus coffee mornings and bingo. It has also provided a base for the NHS and the local council to provide services, including flu jabs and fitness classes.
The community choir singing inside Moorsley Hut.
“Achieving a new community building for a small village was always going to be a battle for a small group of volunteers and there were humps in the road along the way which sometimes felt daunting and occasionally insurmountable,” says Jacky.
“But there can be no better legacy than to provide a village that had absolutely nothing, that had been left with little hope of being noticed, with a permanent community building for this generation, and the next and the next.”
Interview by Ryan Herman
Discover more inspiring stories from Big Local areas on our Voices page. You can also listen to the latest series of our community power podcast to hear from more people making change happen through Big Local.
