Page 49 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

Village fancy Dress competition around the same time as the “Big Auction”.

The old Town Hall before any restoration, can be seen in the background.
This is the “Green”

The story of this unusual wheel-barrow comes from our efforts to raise money to pay for
the hall restoration. We had to find a quarter of the cost. Lincolnshire County Council paid
for half and East Lindsey, our local District Council paid the other quarter.

Being an inventive sort of chap and being on the Hall Management committee, I had
thrown several ideas at my colleagues, the first being that the hall was not used sufficiently
simply because it was not a nice building in the early 1970's.

The arches were all bricked up, the high inside ceiling prevented economical heating being
used and there was no natural daylight except “upstairs” which was not accessible.
An ex school friend in Boston who was also a surveyor agreed to give the hall the ”once
over”, he saw no objection to the arches being opened up and glazed.
He also had ideas for a kitchen, proper cloakrooms and heating. The County Council were
at this time looking for Community Projects to support financially and we fitted that criteria
perfectly.
Another of my ideas was to run a shell fish stall at the Carrington Park Traction Engine
Rally. It made profit thanks to the kind offices of one of my haulage clients Sid Lovelace.
He loaned us a “proper” catering caravan and sold us the necessary shellfish at a good
price.
Our target was to meet the required one quarter of the total cost of several thousand
pounds....we needed a “big” idea!

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