PHOTO: Parishioners inside the hall after church on Easter Sunday.
By RIVER MCCROSSEN
Coonamble’s Anglican community could soon be able to use their hall again as the renovations near completion.
Work began at the St Barnabas Anglican Church Hall late last year to upgrade the more than 100-year-old building.
The upgrades will include a wheelchair ramp, a revamped kitchen and a good-sized meeting room.
So far the exterior will remain as is.
“We still have painting to do after this process, but the meeting room is basically completed other than the windows,” Parish Treasurer Barbara James
“And the kitchen is getting very close.
“For the purposes of using the building, we now have a section of it that is going to be readily usable by us and the community groups who may find it a useful place to hold meetings or functions or such.
“It’s only I would say maybe a quarter of the building taken up with the meeting room and kitchen, and the other end is still big enough to hold bigger kinds of functions like youth activities.”
Barbara said she’s hoping all work will be finished in time for the church’s garage sale in April.
Parish Rector Warden Lois Cain said the next step will be revamping the toilet facilities. She said they are still functional but overdue for an upgrade.
“Then it’s just the visual improvements: the painting and the guttering basically,” Lois said.
The Parish also has plans to upgrade security thanks to the federal government’s Securing Faith-Based Places grant, which was approved around Christmas time 2023.
“No work has started on that yet, but we have just received the first instalment of that money. So, that will just ensure that the hall and the church are secure with alarm systems and security lighting,” Lois said.
“We do have a bit of vandalism with the location of it all.”
The hall was broken into at least twice last year.
Lois thanked local donors for the kitchen renovation, which she said wasn’t covered in the grant from the NSW Government’s Stronger Country Communities Fund, received February last year.
“Without the local donations we wouldn’t have a kitchen,” Lois said. “We would have a the shell of a kitchen.”