Messages of Support

Email your message, name and the town/village where you live to : Campaign@savehorshamtownhall.co.uk and we will display it on this page.

(Please note we will delete any record of your email address as soon as your message is displayed on this page)

Paul Hudson , Horsham Town :

I have only been living in Horsham for just over 6mths and am horrified by the councils descision to disown the town hall.
Poor decision making like this give the councilors a very bad reputation and only serve to show the community they are out-of-touch with our needs and wishes.
Does the council forget this is a historic building and a massive part of the town and community that just cant be sold off or forgotten.I would prefer my taxes go to this worthy cause.
Horsham is an excellent town and has a lot of culture including the town hall building.Horsham town councillors need to do a lot more work and be more understanding and find a way to save and restore the building to use it as it was intended.
I will not support any commercial use. It is a building for the community.

We have just moved into the Horsham area to live and think that the Town Centre with all its lovely buildings including The Town Hall are worthy of protection and appreciation. With that in mind I would like to put my name to the ongoing campaign against the Town Hall being turned into a restaurant. As you quite rightly say there are plenty of restaurants already and having seen the old Market Hall yesterday in Chichester that is now a Next store it is a travesty to see a fine old building commercialised in that unsympathetic way.

As a member of the MU and music lover it is vital that all good art and music venues should be maintained by local and district councils for that purpose. Also an isle of difference in a cloned town centre.

We too, here in Sevenoaks ,have this same ongoing battle with regard to our Stag Theatre, and while Sevenoaks may seem a million miles away from Horsham, these self same places provide a circuit of venues that allow musical and theatrical acts places to perform outside London in Kent, Surrey and Sussex. This often allows us to see our favourite acts at reasonable prices and without the need to make that mad trip to London, often leaving a show early to get the last train home (It leaves so early and lots of us cant afford to go anyway.)

To attract good acts it is necessary to provide venues with good acoustics and comfortable facilities both for performers and artists alike, such places are quite rare and to close such a venue as Horsham Old Town Hall would be a disaster. For councillors too I would have thought.

To those of you in the Council currently opposed to using this venue for anything but music and the arts whilst it is nice to take yourselves, family or friends out to a restaurant, would it not make for an even better evening being able to take in a show or musical event too?

Please rethink putting costs aside and provide your citizens with a small but very significant benefit.

"We fully support the campaign to save the old town hall for community activity and view the approach of the Council as just another example of where they are far happier to support the commercial imperative than consider the community benefits of such a centrally located facility."

"As the campaign website shows, this is an issue that has had Horsham people talking for years. Some people are against the Old Town Hall being used as a restaurant and some people are for it. People from both sides of the argument have written to me, e-mailed and visited my advice surgeries.

"I have had lengthy correspondence with the organisers of the campaign and, as Horsham's MP, ensured that their views were taken into consideration by Horsham District Council.

"However, this is a matter for the Council and it would be inappropriate for me to involve myself any further.

"However I sincerely hope that this landmark building at the centre of Horsham's history will continue to be accessible to Horsham residents."

Robert Mayfield, Horsham :

Every effort needs to be made by the community to keep Horsham Town Hall open and available for community use. Although the building looks cold and austere it has a heart that is warm and inviting.

My first encounter with this iconic building came in about 1981 when I first moved to Horsham and learnt that the town hall had a ghost called Dan Roberts, who, it was said was the only benevolent ghost in the country, as he waits until the time when the building once again becomes the heart of the town.

Some years later I learnt that Dan Roberts had been the custodian of the hall for the Duke of Norfolk. (More details can be found on the Dan Roberts’ page on www.flyingcastlestories.co.uk )

Then in 2002 having formed the Blue Flash Music Trust I began looking for a suitable venue to run music workshops etc. By chance a music workshop was held in the hall in Feb 2003, and the wonderful acoustics became apparent. From 2003 to 2005 many workshops and concerts were held there. Unfortunately it had become increasingly difficult to continue to use the building.

A sense of desperation lead me to thinking how to promote the building and its worth in other ways than running events there. The building had become a great part of my life because it had shown me something new about playing the piano that I had not realized before.

The memory of Dan Roberts came to mind and I wrote Dan Roberts’ Dream, then there followed Space Visitors; both stories reflecting on certain aspects of music in this country. Dan Roberts’ Dream is shortly to be published.

One day while walking past the town hall it occurred to me that perhaps, sometimes, the hall got so fed up with being neglected, and unnoticed, that it just vanished. This gave rise to the idea of the hall becoming a flying castle!

Spurred on by this idea I brought together the characters of an earlier story I had written in 1983 called The Time Chase, with some of the characters of the two stories mentioned above. The next thing a flying castle needed was a crew and there they were staring down at one in Market Square; the Ladye Fayre, Barnie the Bear, and Greatlion the lion. Then added to these was Lucky Jim the little genie from the Time Chase, and my own little Yorkie, Paddy, and by 2008 fifteen stories had been written!

This sense of inspiration the building holds could well spread itself to the rest of the community, and you have only to look at the wonderful painting Between Times by John Wakefield to see what new possibilities could be presented to the residents of this town, and to the communities beyond.