The Lee Youth Centre: Millennium
Diary revisitedBy Colin Sully and Barnaby Usborne
In the fifth of our series of articles looking back at The Lee Millennium Diary, we revisit another story from that year, provide an update… and partially solve a mystery!
Every Friday evening…
Throughout the second half of the 20th Century, The Lee Youth Club met regularly at the village hall. Writing in the Millennium Diary in July 2000, the Youth Club reports that 30 to 40 people attended The Lee Youth Centre every Friday evening:
“There has been a Youth Club in The Lee for over 50 years. Many generations have met, made friends and even married. Although it is non-denominational, links with the Church are maintained through the committee and involvement in village events.
There is a variety of fun and games and ‘chilling out’. Trips are arranged to go ice-skating, bowling, etc. The Club is affiliated to the British Association of Youth Club and has won the Buckinghamshire Under 13s Bowling Cup.
The Youth Club Committee is Brigit Glover (Chair Person), Vivien Salisbury (Youth Leader), Nick Humphreys and Liz Browning (Youth Club helpers), Barbara Nelson, Chris Neville and Sheila Saunders.
Meeting times: 7:00 to 8:45 (ages 7 – 15); 7:00 to 10:00 (Senior Club).”
So what happened to the Youth Club? We tracked down former members and helpers to tell the story!
A loss of appeal?
The immediate cause of the demise of the Youth Club was the difficulty in finding a qualified Youth Leader to replace Vivien Salisbury when she decided to stand down. Despite much searching and appeals to the national association, no-one could be found and in the end Vivien’s resignation brought the Friday evening meetings to an end. Whether it would have survived much into the 21st century is open to debate; would the youth of today have found the ‘fun and games’ as appealing?
The Lee Youth Club (and Parish Hall) Committee continued to function for a while, but now without a Youth Club and therefore without a substantial part of its income something had to be done and quickly.
A hall by any other name…
In the end a simple but rather neat solution was found; a new committee was formed – subtly called The Lee Parish Hall (and Youth Club) Committee – with new members who then raised money from grants and local fundraising activities to pay for some major refurbishment of the building to widen the usage and appeal of the hall.
The rest of the story is of course evident in the usage the hall now has – attracting the very youngest in the parish as well as the not-so-young; everything from HS2 meetings to birthday parties for all ages.
If a Youth Club were to re-emerge, then under the terms of the agreement struck at the time it was dissolved, it would be entitled to use the Parish Hall free of charge. However, with the Scout group now well established and The Lee Cricket Club not only appealing to the children of the village on a Friday evening (as well as those from neighbouring villages) but to their parents as well, in the newly-refurbished club-house, a re-emergence of the Youth Club does now seem unlikely.
Mystery (partially) solved
Talking to Youth Club members and helpers has also partially solved the mystery of the ‘Time Capsule’ buried outside the hall to mark the Millennium. It turns out that the contents were compiled by the Youth Club, not the WI. As they were sharing the village hall at the time, they combined to carry out the burial ceremony. So… can any Youth Club member from 2000 recall what was in the capsule?