Exeter Street Hall Brighton
It was built in 1884 by St Luke’s Church as a Sunday School. It is a beautiful red brick Gothic Building with the separate boys’ and girls’ entrances still apparent to this day.
For the past 128 years it has been used by people of all ages for tea parties to polling station, Boy’s Brigade to wedding receptions, pre-school to zumba, the list goes on…
Local residents want to ensure that it continues for another 138 years and beyond as a valuable community space that everyone can enjoy.
TheHallGetInvolved came together at the end of 2011 inspired by a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Exeter Street Hall had been put up for sale by the Church and we wanted to get the Prestonville community to buy it as a community asset for all of us and future generations to enjoy for years to come. We didn’t want to find ourselves a few years down the line with developers moved in and regretting that we had lost such a precious community space.
And over a thousand signatures for our petition showed us that the Community were and still are firmly behind us.
The Group has now grown from a few people meeting in the back of a pub to a fully registered community benefits society – a not-for-profit organisation run for, as the name suggests, the benefit of its community. The official term is an Industrial & Provident Society.