Ansty Community Centre officially opened

By Bradbury Williams

A new community and sports centre for Mid Sussex has officially been opened after an epic 20-year fundraising campaign. Mid Sussex MP Mims Davies cut the ribbon for the £1.25M Ansty Village Centre at the start of an Open Day on October 17th, which was staged to help put the venue on the map.

The building combines a community hall and sports facilities for the village and the wider area, replacing a former WW1 hut, which had stood on the site for the last century. The centre has been open since Polling Day back in May, hosting a range activities including exercise classes, a choir, birthday parties, charity evenings, quiz nights as well as providing a new home for cricket, football and snooker. The centre has a state-of-the art main hall, with two sides of bi-fold doors opening onto the the recreation ground, also a maxi screen and projector and a well equipped new kitchen.

Just before the ribbon ceremony, there was a short presentation for Maureen Gibson and Brian Fletcher to formally recognise that they worked tirelessly to make the endless plans for a new centre become a reality. Another long term visionary from the Ansty Village Hall Trust, Marion Pettitpierre, was delighted by the historic Open Day event: “I have lost count of the number of cream teas we ran and the hundreds of cakes we baked, but we have finally got the centre we deserve with something for everyone.” AVHT Trustee and Project Manager John Thorpe secured the highly complex funding package against all odds and a design that skilfully met the requirements of all users. He then found a way to get it built, with some strong local and professional support

For more details turn to page 50 of November’s Cuckfield Life.

Ansty Open Day October 2021

There’s a big opening coming soon in Ansty and everyone is invited. After more than eighteen months of construction and three months of trial running, the new £1.25m Ansty Village Centre is staging an Open Day, with the aim of attracting as many visitors from across Mid Sussex as possible.

Already, the centre hosts a range of sporting and community activities but it has some determined ambitions to be a thriving hub for the village and a leading venue in the area. “We want everyone to drop in and see what we have to offer,” said Maureen Gibson, chair of the Ansty Village Hall Trust. “Over the last few months we have had a lot of bookings from Tai Chi to birthday parties, but we still have a lot more to offer.”

The centre exhibition will be open from midday until 4pm on Sunday 17th October, after a short stakeholder event, attended by Mid Sussex MP Mims Davies. “There will be a variety of stands in the village hall and sporting activities from women’s cricket to snooker,” said Jon Gilley, chair of the Ansty Village Centre Trust.

Ansty Village Hall into a new Antsy Village Centre

Ansty Platoon of the Home Guard, thought to be taken outside village hall in1943

By Bradbury Williams

With exactly a century of service behind it, the old Ansty Village Hall is coming to the end of its unique innings at the heart of a thriving Mid-Sussex community. The official grand opening back in January 1921 was largely managed by the new Women’s Institute, one of the first in the country.

They ensured the new hall was equipped to a good standard, fully furnished, with oil lamps, a coke stove and curtains made by their members. But in just a few months time the historic old hall will finally be demolished to make way for the new £1.25M Ansty Village Centre.

“There’s no doubt it’s the end of an era,” said Maureen Gibson, of the Ansty Village Hall Trust. “I can’t count all the village fetes, cream teas and Christmas parties…there’s been a lot of happy memories and a lot of village history.”

For the last 100 years the hall has been a community centre and home to a social club and a highly successful cricket club, that’s grown ever stronger over the decades.

Before reaching Ansty the beloved hall had an earlier role in the First World War. It is thought to have provided troop accommodation for the Canadian Expeditionary Force on the Western Front in France. In August 1920, the Ansty Village Hall Committee had bought some land from the Sergison Estate for £20, but it had decided it couldn’t meet the estimated £542 for a new brick building.

Within months they found a solution, having jumped at the opportunity to buy an army surplus hut. It would arrive by train at Haywards Heath station as a flat pack, at a cost of just £250. During the interwar years, Ansty continued to grow with lots of new housing between the long established country homes. It had the relatively new St. John’s Chapel just next to the village hall, built in 1905 on the site of an old mission house. Also there was a village shop, a post office, a market garden, a blacksmith and a forge, now a Shell garage, plus a very well used pub, called The Green Cross, later the Anstye Cross.

Read more about the history of Ansty Village hall, including multiple sporting clubs, churches, and more in Feb’s issue of Cuckfield Life.