A Brief History of Hanborough Playing Fields Association

(For historical background on the parish look at the parish appraisal from the 1990s. https://e-voice.org.uk/hpfa/assets/documents/hanborough-parish-appraisal-1 )

Hanborough Playing Fields Association (HPFA) is a charity managed by a committee of trustees; eleven are appointed by other parish organisations and thirteen elected at the AGM which is open to the whole community. It manages the local playing fields and the associated Pavilion which is also the village hall. Before World War 2, land behind the Swan pub and what is now Churchill Way were both used for football whilst cricket was in Church Hanborough. The Churchill Way land became a dumping ground for scrapped aeroplanes as evidenced by, a possibly exaggerated, claim of someone digging up an old Spitfire in his garden! After the war, government policy was to ensure that the country produced 100% of its food to pre-empt any future crisis in supply as had occurred when imports were imperilled by the axis’s blockade. This meant the Ministry of Food regulated the use of farmland so there were no playing fields in Hanborough.

An inaugural meeting in the old Parish Hall, (now the flats next to Oliver's Garage) resulted in the playing fields committee led by Dr Bolsover and it raised funds to purchase some land. Many households made regular donations of sixpence per week (2.5p today!) until there was £500. There was an offer of land at Tuckwell's pit in Church Road, but it was not suitable. Behind where Reilly Close now stands was a builder's yard in the “Pit” and the builder also owned two adjacent fields. These were flat and ideal for a playing field, so they became the target of the campaign. Folklore from the time is that the builder offered the land at a good price but would not sell whilst local farmers used it, thinking that this would protect him from having to sell. However, campaigners then applied moral pressure on the farmer and he agreed to terminate his tenancy. The purchase went through in 1952 with the land registered in the name of the Parish Council to hold in trust for the village with a constitution that places management and control in an independent committee of trustees selected and elected by the residents.

There is an alternative tale of those days which may be ever-so-slightly exaggerated. This is the claim that by knocking the Vicar off his bike in "Broad Row" (an old name for Church Road) some local lads persuaded him to fight the cause for new playing fields.

This gave the village playing fields but there was a second thread to the development of HPFA arising from the need for more access to a community building in the parish. What is now the Recreation Hall in Witney Road was largely under the control of one family and not all organisations had ready access. So, there was pressure to supply an alternative venue and within a couple of years villagers built the Pavilion that is now the village hall. This explains our constitution gives the right to eleven village organisations to each appoint a trustee of HPFA.

The early years

Cricket and football clubs operated from the very beginning and there were grass tennis courts in the far corner by where the school is now. Hard tennis courts came later and were the inspiration of Mary Davies but unfortunately the tennis club did not last beyond the 1970s. There was not the breadth of organisations using the pavilion as there are now. Mainly there were fund-raising events run by the sports clubs and HPFA. Some of the running costs came from direct contributions because the weekly household collection of sixpence a week continued into the 1960s. Bert Timms, a local chimney sweep ran a regular bingo night. Nursery School (now Pre-School) started in 1968 with the building of the extension to accommodate them. There was an annual village fête but by the mid-1960s this was losing money and despite a very successful start HPFA was in decline.

Rebirth

In October 1974 the HPFA AGM failed to produce a management committee forcing an emergency village meeting in the Manor School hall resulting in new people to form a new committee. After they got to work the situation improved with new regular users of the pavilion to provide regular income including an annual PC grant (since suspended in favour of specific grants when required). Dog Club, a current user dates from this period and back then there was regular table tennis. One particularly successful activity was boys' six-a-side football that generated good income and it ran from 1974 to 1985. Its major event once had 2,500 attending it with cars parked all over the field. In 1981 volunteer labour from the football and cricket clubs constructed the sports changing rooms.

What started to become obvious by this time was that may activities had a limited life span as the community evolved and unfortunately by the late 1980s use of the Pavilion had fallen again.

Working with change

From the end of the 1980s until the present the Pavilion has been busy mostly, but success relies on adapting to the rapid changes that now occur in society. In earlier years when an event required a bar a local licensee would provide one, but this was not always possible. An improved solution came when one licensee agreed to install a bar providing, he had all the business for parties. However, he went bankrupt, so the next solution was to run the Pavilion as licensed premises, but this is not normal for a registered charity, so we formed a new organisation now known as the Hanborough Sports and Social Club based on the sport clubs who share the profit with HPFA. This purchased the equipment from the bankrupt licensee and the original bar was built in 1989, with improvements in 1993, an extension in 1995 and a chilled cellar added courtesy of the brewery in 1996.

When bookings dropped, short mat bowls was becoming popular so in 1989 HPFA introduced it and in two years it flourished and together with football and cricket made the bar very profitable. From the success of short mat bowls sprang the bowls club because with grants from the Foundation for Sport and Art (Football Pools) and the original Lottery Fund we constructed a bowling green equal to any in the county. However, with the bowls club having their own building this has meant less business for the bar, so it was a two-edged sword.

In 1993 there was major improvement to the Pavilion when the kitchen and new toilets were added freeing space to make the main hall bigger. However, by 2009 the kitchen needed a complete makeover with complete redecoration of the hall and toilets. Soon after we found the main roof and front wall were failing and the changing rooms needed new space and water heating. Faced with mammoth cost we worked with the parish council and after long public consultation went for a major programme of refurbishment and extension in 2012-2013. Timing was good in that we had the last £100,000 grant from WODC but unluckily bad in that we could not know within a few years we faced 30% rise in population which would have influenced plans.

A bigger and better building brings new challenges, needing sometimes to have a blitz of voluntary labour for painting etc. This year we used Facebook to round up an army to smarten the outside.

Part of the outside area is under the management of the parish council. What was the tennis court became a multi-sports area resulting from a project in the 1980s called Sport 10,000. This generated funds to purchase equipment but did not put in place any funding for running costs. All the sport at the playing fields centres around clubs who are self-funding and self-managing. Without an equivalent structure for the multi-sports area, HPFA could not justifiably fund this using income from its users so the parish council run it as a social amenity funding it from the parish precept. In recent years they obtained funding to replace the whole amenity so now it is truly a multi-use games area (MUGA) and very popular.

The area between the MUGA and the school was the children's play area built after a very successful fund-raising campaign by a group of parents (Hanborough Adventure Playground Association) in the mid-1990s. It also became an amenity managed by the parish council. Very recently, a new group of parents had an equally successful fund-raising campaign so a new children’s play park in the Pit replaces the old area which itself is part of what was meant to be a simple land swap with the school to facilitate school expansion following the large increase in housing. However, this deal proceeds very slowly and remains uncertain.

Our events and users

The organisations and events we host continually change showing how our community evolves. Hanborough Show dates from 1988 previously being on a farmer's field. Musical fireworks started in 2000 but earlier there was a smaller firework display. On New Year's Eve there was a dance open to everyone organised originally by the football club then by HPFA itself in the 1990s culminating in 1999 with the hugely successful Millennium Ball. This was in a marquee and possibly the biggest event in the Oxford area that night with around 500 celebrating. Since then there were no New Year’s Eve dances in the Pavilion but there was a September ball in 2001 as a precursor for the HPFA golden jubilee ball in September 2002 with children’s and pensioner’s events over a weekend. For years following, the September ball was a regular feature until recently. Many other events had short lives. In 2009 there were two attempts to make extra use of the ball marquee with events for fund-raising, one being the business lunch with guest speaker David Cameron and the other a craft fair. The latter proved better suited for HPFA fund-raising and ran for a few years. In 2010 was a successful "It's a knock-out" competition but the year following it made a loss. Another venture was the Hanborough village market than ran for a while on Saturdays. Now, apart from the two stalwarts the fireworks night and the Hanborough Show, events tend to be one-offs such as the Queens Jubilee in 2012, the re-opening party 2013, a cider Festival with the Wurzels, Emfest raising cash for charity and the Party at the Pavilion last year (hopefully, to be developed further this year). For the past few years bingo has made a surprising come-back and enabled us to raise thousands of pounds for charity during the winter. This is a version of our open bar nights which in the summer are family nights.

For many years Hatwell's Fair ran for three summer days on the grass area by the school but in recent years has been more absent than here.

Current regular activities in the Pavilion are the youth club, parish council meetings, dog club, karate, keep fit class, short mat bowls, Pre-School, breakfast club, after school club, guides, keep fit and yoga classes. Our parish council are trialling a film night.

Of equal importance is that we provide a venue for organisations' and families' own functions, be they a celebration, social occasion or a fund-raising event. A significant factor for bookings is that the Pavilion offers a kitchen and licensed bar. For the very young, the Pavilion is available without the bar as a popular venue for daytime children’s parties. There are public uses such as elections and meetings like those to publicise the ambitions of developers and councils to add hundreds of houses to West Oxfordshire.

Football, cricket and bowls are the three outdoor sports we host played by all ages. Aunt Sally, if you count it as a sport, makes four! Indoors we have karate and yoga. A recent health initiative by the parish council with HPFA support is some outdoor gym equipment by the changing rooms and a marked 500 metre route for people to walk or run. We also have a public-access defibrillator outside the changing rooms.

And finally, in the absence of nearby parks the playing fields act as a general leisure area.