About & History
From village schoolroom to village hall
Built in the mid-1700s and complete with its small bell tower, the Braithwaite Hall has been at the centre of Sawrey life for more than 250 years.
The Hall today
The Braithwaite Hall is the village hall for Far and Near Sawrey and a registered charity, number 521378. It is looked after by Trustees and volunteers, nobody is paid, and every penny of hire income goes back into heating, lighting and keeping an old building sound.
It sits in an acre of lawns with a car park, and is available to hire seven days a week at deliberately modest rates so that local clubs, classes and families can afford to use it.
The history of the Hall
In the 18th century many small schools were set up in villages throughout the country, financed by local benefactors. The Braithwaite Hall — originally the Sawrey Endowed School — is one such building. A school existed here before 1766.
In 1766 a local man, William Braithwaite, gave £600 to three trustees, a huge sum in those days. The interest on half was to pay a schoolmaster to teach "the poor children of Sawrey"; the remaining £300 is presumed to have gone towards building the school — the main hall as we see it today. The first schoolmaster was a Mr Elleray, in 1773.
The schoolroom originally had a gallery running along the west wall, with its staircase rising from in front rather than behind — the joist holes are still visible across the wall. Older children were taught up in the gallery by the master, while the younger ones worked below.
Until the parish church was built in 1869 the school served as a chapel of ease, licensed for services, with an old table used as the altar. In the 19th century a meeting room was added on the north side, converted to toilets and a cloakroom in the 1970s; the room at the west end, now the kitchen, was probably added after 1878 when the school passed to the Charity Commissioners.
Much has changed since: oil lamps gave way to electric light in the 1930s or 40s, heating systems have come and gone, and the floor has been relaid more than once — which is why there is a step up just inside the old main doors. When the south side of the roof was renewed in 1994, the slates came off to reveal that the roof had been built in 1773 from second-hand timbers; nobody knows how old they were even then.
Its purpose is a little different from the one intended, but its function as a centre for the local community remains. Long may the Braithwaite Hall serve future generations as it has served all those over the last two hundred years and more.