Tea@3 You Say? Don’t Mind If I Do!
Somerset’s Freemasons have been pleased to support a new community initiative in the village of Keinton Mandeville.
The village has both Community and Village Halls. ‘Tea@3’ meets every two weeks at the Community Hall, with the alternate weeks being hosted at the Village Hall through Parish Council sponsorship.
The Community Hall is located on the ground floor of the grade 2 listed Methodist Chapel which was built in 1843 by volunteer quarrymen from the village.
The Chapel sponsors the Community Hall, which relies on bequests and legacies to cover operating costs.
In order to support the local community, especially the elderly, young children and those less fortunate, the Chapel only requests that very modest financial contributions are made, often being barely enough to cover the actual running costs involved to host the events in question.
As the cold weather approached this year, the Chapel started a fortnightly ‘Tea@3’ afternoon session, where members of the village community, including school children and their parents, were invited to visit for a cup of tea and a slice of cake in the warmth of the Hall – and to chat and play board games as an after-school club.
The first sessions were very well attended and hailed a resounding success. However, providing modern user-friendly furnishings was a problem for the ‘Tea@3’ organisers if regular events were to continue. Somerset Freemasons stepped in, through donation and active engagement, to part-enable sufficient round tables, chairs and bean bags for all of the various activities to take place.
Deputy PGM, Ben Batley, was pleased to be in attendance at a recent ‘Tea@3’ event, where all were entertained with carols from the local school choir in addition to a wide variety of other activities. Methodist Chapel Minister, Rev. Colin Moore, was on hand to thank Somerset’s Freemasons for their generous donation of £500 from the Somerset Masonic Charities, an amount which has since been matched by the Chapel Trustees, sufficient to enable events to continue during the current winter months and for some years to come.
Ben said, “it’s an honour and privilege to be able to actively engage in the local community to develop new diverse background groups. supported through donation from our members, and to publicly speak about Masonry in a positive way that hopefully attracts new membership in the future”.
Colin said, “we are extremely thankful for the generous assistance provided by Somerset Freemasons to enable future ‘Tea@3’ events, which we also acknowledge by the permanent display of your logo here in the Community Hall – thank you to all of your members”.
