The WI was formed in this country in 1915 to keep rural communities, and food production, alive during the First World War – the first meeting was on September 16 in Llanfairpwll, the north Wales village with the incredibly long name – and Brancepeth WI was formed in 1919. Brancepeth is an estate village based around the Norman castle which was then owned by Lord and Lady Boyne. They provided a reading room for their estate workers, where magazines and periodicals were available as well as a billiard table, but it was in a room in an estate house, now known as the Corner House.
READ MORE: A GAME OF PATIENTS: THE STORY OF BRANCEPETH CASTLE Dances and concerts were held in the village hall, meetings were held in the Rectory or the church, but there was a need for everybody to be brought together under one roof. The estate gave the site of an old brewery for a new hall and set up a building committee to oversee its construction, but it was the WI that drove it through. Members of the Brancepeth WI in 1922 Not only did they hold fund-raising events, but when they became exasperated at the slowness of the project, they wrote to the committee and cheekily asked if there was “any chance of getting started this century?”.
Poster advertising a fete in the grounds of Brancepeth Castle raising money for the hall 100 years ago This galvanised the committee into action, and estate workers began construction in their own time using estate machinery. Lord Boyne with estate workers a.
