Panelled Perfection

Our renovation work continues here at the Chantry, with the Lounge being our latest space to be given a facelift.

This room had many challenges, from restoration of the Tudor brick fireplace to scraping back a few hundred years-worth of paint from the original panelled walls, with extensive repairs of the wooden shutters and a much-needed sweep of the chimney along the way!

JK Decoration did a sterling job of prepping and painting all the woodwork, while our chairman, Dave, took charge of making sure the shutters and their housings were up to scratch. The lovely soft green reflects the garden views beautifully and makes a wonderful feature of the historic panelling.

Our thanks also go out to local businessman Dan, from ChimneyTech, who made short work of several generations-worth of crow’s nests hidden above the fireplace!

We were lucky enough to be given some funding for this project from South Gloucestershire Council’s Area Wide Grants scheme, as well as some Member Awarded Funding, courtesy of Cllr Maggie Tyrrell, Cllr Jayne Stansfield and Cllr Shirley Holloway. Our thanks to them for helping us to do justice in restoring this historic room.

We felt that, as the Social Club no longer operates, it was time for a change of name to go with the facelift. The new name reflects our long history, and honours one of the earliest owners of the Chantry, dating back to the 1500’s….

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you:

The Hampden Room.

Lovely Lawns and another Thank You!

As the gardeners amongst you will know, this time of year is a busy one outdoors. Not least because the grass seems to grow quicker than you can mow it!

This is another Thank You post - this time showing appreciation to Sullivan's Garden Machinery.

Our old mower, having given us over 15 years of dedicated service, was finally retired this year and the results above come thanks to some great help from the team at Sullivan's. They gave our Chairman a lot of advice and assistance in choosing a new mower that should give us many years of immaculate lawns for you all to come and enjoy.

Thanks again to this fabulous local business for getting us up and running. We really are lucky to have such a great community of tradespeople and businesses in Thornbury who are always ready to step up and help us out!

Unexpected Repairs!

We’ve had a few building repairs and maintenance issues come up unexpectedly in the last month and we need to thank the wonderful people who came out to help us.

Firstly, a HUGE thank you to Doug Fowler. Doug takes aerial photos for, amongst others, the Thornbury Gazette and spotted a loose tile on our roof during one of his shoots. He alerted us and, with the help of another local company, DB Roofing Services, it was fixed in no time!

Secondly, our thanks go out to local plasterer Chris Lockett-Chapman, who gave up some of his Easter weekend to fix a large section of blown render on the main building. He dedicated two days to fixing it and has done a great job. He left everything immaculately clean and tidy – now we just need someone to paint it!

Last but not least, our stair lift decided to stop working halfway up the stairs last week – luckily no one was on it at the time! The lovely David at Thornbury Stairlifts came out at short notice, gave it a thorough service, and had everything up and running again in no time.

Thanks again to everyone involved with these two projects. It makes the stress of looking after such an historic building easier to handle when we know we have such a great community to rely on!

Now we’ll leave you to play “Spot the loose tile” on Doug’s wonderful photo.