The Old Meeting House - still meeting local needs!
By Karen Naylor, Elder, Wareham United Reformed Church
Next time you’re bundling shopping bags into your boot at Sainsbury’s, cast a glance across the road and you’ll spot us! The Old Meeting House, (now called “Wareham United Reformed Church”), has a proud tradition of bringing people together and hosting all sorts of meetings / activities to meet local needs since the 17th century!
Refurb to kitchen
As a Church with social justice in our DNA, we’ve shown God’s love to Wareham for decades, through non-judgemental hospitality including fortnightly Lunch Clubs for seniors living alone, Thursday coffee mornings open to all and occasional community lunches, but we wanted to do SO MUCH more!
Unfortunately, after 45 years of hard service our kitchen was totally dilapidated, no freezer or dishwasher and a diva of a cooker!
So, a huge “thank you” for the grant funding we received from Talbot Village Trust, the Lions, Rotary Club plus Dorset Council and Wareham Town Council not to mention the generosity of very many local people. We’re delighted to say that we now have a beautiful, and (more importantly) a safe and functioning kitchen as you’ll see from our “before” and “after” photos below! Nor can we forget Jeff Streeter & his team who made it so (AND valiantly took to the roof in the middle of the kitchen refit, to patch a leak that threatened everything!)
Apart from looking beautiful, the refurb means we can do SO MUCH MORE to meet needs locally! Here’s a flavour of our offers:
Breakfasts, Coffee Mornings and Lunches - community hospitality on offer at the URC...
Our existing Lunch Clubs for older people living alone will continue fortnightly but we can increase the numbers we can serve, thanks to the refit! So, even more yummy roasties for this lovely group!
The existing Thursday Coffee Mornings will also continue but can now operate (even more) efficiently!
In the Spring, we want to start a NEW, monthly, additional Lunch for people who are in the greatest need demographically eg Carers, lone parents with tots, the homeless, those with mental ill health, people who are isolated etc – we imagine many of these will be signposted to us by agencies such as the Foodbank, social care, the Families Hub, health partners or the Carers team.
Given our proximity to military bases at Bovington, Rockley and Blandford, we want to mainstream an event we’ve been trialling i.e. a Veterans’ Breakfast. These people are heroes who’ve served us, so it’s our turn to meet their needs by serving them (a FULL English) on a Saturday once a month!
Another opportunity which we’ll pilot in late Spring is a NEW, twice monthly Souper Saturday! Offering homemade soup, bread & cheese from 12 – 1, we hope the community will join us (perhaps on the way home after a visit to the Farmers’ Market and a cheeky cake at the Parish Hall – at the URC we know your needs so well!!)
On the subject of food, cue another HUGE shout out to Sovereign Network Group, Wareham Coop and Talbot Village Trust who are helping to support costs on some of the above hospitality events.
An additional NEW project which may need a visit to our lovely kitchen for sustenance, is our community Graveyard Project which is supported by Sustainable Wareham and funded by Wareham Town Council. This aims to make our graveyard respectful to the dead, good for a community space and great for nature (see page opposite for more details or ways to get involved).
Volunteers needed!
Finally, our beautiful, beloved, ancient but very leaky and flaky Grade 2 listed building, always needs some TLC in the form of cleaning, polishing, painting, weeding etc. So, if you’re a Mrs (or Mr) Mop, a trades-person, a or just someone who wants to give back something for nothing to enable all the above functions to happen, do please contact us at secwarehamurc@gmail.com
We’d love to hear from you and thank you again for what we have received and (hopefully) may be about to receive!
