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The Church Hall

St Aldhelm’s Church Hall - home of the Walmington-on- Sea Home Guard

St Aldhelm's Church hall is the beating heart of the Walmington-on-Sea platoon - their main parade ground and base of operations. Turn off the High Street at Swallow's Bank, walk past the war memorial, into Mortimer road and behind St Aldhelm's Church you will find the hall.
Like every church hall ever built it has the familiar smell of wax polish and damp. The floorboards by the doors are rather worn by the coming and going of parishioners, and more recently the tramp-tramp of heavy army boots.

The hall is presided over and maintained by the gloomy figure of Mr Yeatman, the verger. If the church grounds are his territory then the hall is his nest. Its surfaces are worn smooth by the yellow duster permanently tucked under the belt of his cassock - and wobetide anyone who scratches Mr Yeatman's paintwork.

In happier times the hall was filled with the merry sounds of the mother-and-toddler group, and at Christmas the vicar was often to be found there directing the Scout pantomime. War leaves little time for such frivolity, though, and now the hall is used for ARP lectures on Wednesday nights, and for Home Guard training the rest of the time.

The vicar has tried to retain an ecclesiastical grip on the place though - since the organist passed away the choir have found the hall warmer than the church for choral practice. Keeping hold of the side office, though, has proved altogether more difficult. In a moment of patriotic fervour the vicar rashly allowed Mr Mainwaring, captain of the local LDV (as they then were) to make use of his office. But now he is regretting it - prevented from invading and occupying France Cpt. Mainwaring seems to have made it his mission to occupy the office. Now there are hand-grenades in the cupboard, holy orders have been replaced with military ones, and in general church life has hardly been worth living.

For George Mainwaring, on the other hand, life has never been better. True his marriage to the formidable Elizabeth lacks a certain tenderness, and his rise through the hierarchy of Swallow's Bank seems to have petered out in the modest backwaters of Walmington. However, his country needs him, and George Mainwaring is never one to leave a call unanswered. Sitting at his desk in the side office Captain Mainwaring of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard knows his position is unassailable - de facto leader of Walmington-on-Sea and protector of its people. Conflict tends to come from unlikely sources - the ARP, the vicar and the town hall authorities all seem determined to keep him from his duty. But if Jerry dares set so much as the shiny toe cap of a jackboot on the beaches of Walmington, Captain Mainwaring and his platoon of loyal old soldiers will be there to send him packing.

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Last Updated 26 Feb, 2004