The Management of Potten End Village Hall

The general management and control of the Village Hall is vested in Potten End Village Hall, a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) with trustees made up of members from local organisations that have a right to nominate one trustee each. The conduct of the CIO is governed by a written Constitution.

The day to day running of the Village Hall is delegated to a Caretaker Manager. This includes accepting and controlling bookings.

Sydney Renee Courtauld (1873-1962)

Sydney Renee Courtauld was the niece of Samuel Courtauld and the daughter of Sydney Courtauld, crepe and silk manufacturers and part of the Courtauld family firm which became one of the leading names in the British textile business.  She was born in Bocking, Essex (where part of the family business was established) and was educated at Roedean and Newnham.

She became a social work helper with the Women’s University Settlement and the Charity Organisation Society and was a member of the Braintree School Board.  Sydney Renee Courtauld was  active in the movement for women’s suffrage being a member of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage going on to become secretary of the North and East branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, donating to the National Society for Equal Citizenship and lobbying her MP to support women’s membership of Cambridge University.

She did not marry and at the time of gift to our village lived at Little Heath, just outside Potten End, in a house named Bocking.  She died at the age of 98 in 1962.

Sydney Renee Courtauld transferred the Village Hall and land to the parish by a Conveyance dated 28 June 1928 under which the land was conveyed to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations as the “Custodian Trustee”. It relinquished that role in 2019 when the property was transferred to the CIO.

Under the terms of the 1928 conveyance the property is held “to permit the same to be used for the purposes of physical and mental recreation and social moral and intellectual development through the medium of reading and recreation rooms, library, lectures, classes, recreations and entertainments or otherwise as may be found expedient for the benefit of the inhabitants of Potten End with Nettleden”.

Sydney Rennee Courtauld