Welcome to the Village Hall serving
Cropthorne and Charlton.

News about the Tree House

Many of you will have noticed that the Tree House has been out of bounds for a while, and is now partly dismantled. Here is an explanation of what we are doing, and the background to the situation. This structure has been a feature of the Sheppey for many years and has been a favourite of local children and those travelling to play here.

Every year the Village Hall Management Committee is required to have all the play equipment inspected by a recognised organisation for legal and insurance purposes. ROSPA does these inspections for us. Over the past few years the Tree House has been noted for the advancing decay of its structure, we have carried our work to reinforce it, replace rotten decking boards and joists, and have refreshed the safety bark surface. This year, ROSPA noted that some of the main posts were decayed but this wasn’t obvious from the outside, and that other joists were in poor condition. We engaged a contractor to independently inspect the structure, they had to do some dismantling to see the extend of the rot, which turned out to be much worse than we hoped for..

The original structure was designed by a specialist play equipment designer and was paid for in part out of Lottery money. I believe that the cost was around £40,000. A company who build similar play structures was approached for a quote to rebuild it but they declined, instead offering a range of designs, including a Pirate Ship. The Committee felt this was inappropriate for our location, and prohibitively expensive. We asked Toby at T C Contracting to quote to build a new Tree House in a similar style to the original, but giving more growing room for the tree at its centre. After much discussion, the Committee considered three options. 1, dismantle the structure and not replace it. 2, Build a new structure in a sympathetic style. 3, Build a new ‘off the shelf’ play structure. We decided on the middle option, which was also the middle cost option.

The cost of the rebuild is considerable, but we are building for the future and are looking at a structure with a life of maybe 20 years. The Village Hall has paid for the initial work out of our reserves and are seeking grants or donations from a number of sources. All these take time, and most Grant Aid has to be agreed before work is started – so we may end up having to pay the whole amount from our own reserve, money which is really held for major building repairs.

I realise that there is some disappointment in the Village over the slow progress, we had hoped that the work would have been finished before the Summer Holidays, but this is unlikely now. We’ll do our best!

Chris Hall, Chairman of CCVH Management Committee.

Cropthorne and Charlton Village Hall and Playing Field is a UK registered charity, number: 523121