About Us

Our hall opened in 1965 funded by efforts from the community and the local councils. It has no paid staff - we're all volunteers.

The IHVH Management Committee 

The Trustees for 2024/2025 are:
Co-Chairs, Caroline and Matthew Streuli
Treasurer, Ann Mayling
Secretary, Marion Holmes

The Committee for 2024/2025 is:
Julie Cook - IPC
Peter Stanhope – IPC
Vishal Gupta - IPC
Luisa Sullivan - Buckinghamshire Council
Jenni Edwards - St Margaret’s Church
Jenni Edwards - Heathway Ladies
Les Brewer - Iver Heath Drama Club
Carol Campling - Bookings Volunteer
Janet Beale - Hall Volunteer
Pat Roberts - Public Representative

Click on the images at the bottom of the page to see in more detail. If you have information or photos of the hall or events here in 'times gone by' please contact Matt via [email protected]

For information on the history of the Iver Heath Drama Club, click here.

Our Address is: St. Margaret's Close, Iver Heath, Bucks, SL0 0DA
what3words     grapes.vision,sung

There is a map at the bottom of this page. You will find us at the end of Heathway, off Bangors Road North. Drive through the housing estate and we are on a site at the end shared with the junior school.  
Please do not confuse us with Iver Village Hall 
Users of the Village Hall have priority access to our car park. Please see our car park page for details.

A History of our Hall
The official name of our charity is the NEW VILLAGE HALL IVER HEATH and until the 2000s the building itself was often called the Iver Heath New Village Hall. So where was the original?
In 1872 a Church School was opened on Church Road, Iver Heath by St Margaret's Church. The school quickly grew and in 1895 moved to a new building. The original became "redundant, and another use was found for it as a Parish Room or Village Hall." This original Iver Heath Village Hall was described in 1907 as "a rather pretty building" although we have struggled to find pictures of it. Photos of Church Road from 1920s look much like a mix between today's Wood Lane and Hammer Drive in Black Park. In 1925 a wing was added to the hall called the Billiard Room which was funded by Assheton Leaver, a solicitor who lived in Wood Lane.

The next record of the original hall we found was a joint party by the Church Choir and the Scouts in 1914 when tea was served with magic lantern lecture and games including charades before the event finished at 10pm with the God Save the King. The hall ran an Annual Bazaar until the Second World War when it was used as a school for evacuees. In 1943 it was then commandeered by the Army who alongside Lloyds of London (the insurance company) and the Royal Mint had taken up residence at nearby Heatherden Hall - the manor house at the now world-famous Pinewood Studios. The hall returned to being a school again in 1944 when the Iver Heath Council School (which was on Slough Road where today's Infant School stands) was destroyed by Nazi bombing. The school's damaged bell is still on display in the reception of today's Infant School. Despite the damage no-one was killed or seriously injured - although the local paper noted the Headteacher was found in bed covered in plaster and rubble. Within a few days of the bombing, the hall opened with salvaged furniture and resources to 114 children younger than 9, and 106 children aged 9 and older. However, the original village hall was becoming old and in 1945 a petition for a new school described the hall as "damp, insufficiently ventilated and lighted and general is in a dirty condition." The lighting was described as "substandard". In 1948, the Iver Heath Drama Club was formed when the local Women's Institute Ladies Drama Club opened to the wider community. Leslie Higgs, who 25 years later served as Chair of the Iver Heath Drama Club, wrote that the original hall held 99 people, 11 rows of 9 seats. He also noted that the stage was so rotten due to the damp that the club could only perform plays which did not require a large cast on stage at the same time.

Iver Heath was growing and the Iver Heath Social Council was founded in 1958 (with some of the their members joining from the earlier Iver Heath Residents Association of the 1940s and Women's Institute which started in Iver Heath in the late 1920s). Since 1872, the hall had been a meeting place for the Iver Heath community and there had been plans and ideas to create a community centre as early as 1935 (linked to a committee chaired by Trevor Williams), but the second small disagreement of 1939 to 1945 had redirected efforts. The school moved to prefab huts and buildings. Below (see pictures) you can see extracts from the Iver Heath Drama Club which document the less than waterproof nature of the hall's roof and the small building was now rapidly decaying. In 1957 there was discussion and work about extending and refurbishing this original hall on Church Road as well as creating a site for Iver Heath Scouts and Guides with its own car park. Aside from a large cost (£7000!) there was public opposition which wanted to distance the hall from the church. A committee was formed as part of the Iver Heath Social Council which was lead by John Hargreaves, a local resident and leader in the Iver Heath Drama Club as well as a senior figure in management of Pinewood Studios. Politics created some hard work for this team of locals who eventually purchased land behind the original hall, sold that land and the original hall to the district council for 'old people's flats' and agreed to building a new purpose-built hall and village theatre adjoining a planned middle school on the 'Heathway' estate which was allotments and market gardens. Part of the agreement, in line with the original deeds of the original hall, was that a Church Room would be made available to the Rector for use of the Church. This agreement still exists to this day but the Church has not requested use of the room for several years if not decades and have similar facilities now attached to the Church itself. 

Robert Elvery drew plans for a new village hall which actually was two halls with a shared stage and heating system in the middle. The idea was it could be shared by the middle school and the community who could then share the caretaker and the cost. The plan was altered by the County Architect as it was deemed unpractical - although it is not clear if this is because of the middle school being delayed by around two years or the functionality of actually sharing the space. The hall we call home today was built in 1964 by William Bigg and Son and opened in October 1965 by Lord and Lady Drumalbyn who lived nearby on Denham Road (near today's M25 bridge). The total cost for building and furnishing the hall was £23,000 which, adjusted for inflation, is over £375,000 in 2024.  While the sale of the original hall and land made a big contribution, the majority of the funds came from the County Council (£6,000 plus a 999 year lease) and the Iver Heath Social Council who raised over £5,000. Stories of the social groups and the Drama Club with John Hargreaves 'selling bricks' door to door around the parish have been passed down the generations. The Rank Organisation, the then owners of Pinewood Studios, donated over £750 of equipment and curtains. The Iver Heath Scouts and Guides also joined the community centre site along with the library sometime later. 
Written by Matt Streuli with many thanks to The Revd. Dr. Michael Peel and his booklet of 1982. 

Past Committee Members and Volunteers include:
This list is not exhaustive and as we research more history of the hall we hope to add to it.

Father Andrew Montgomerie, Mrs Claire Mowat, Mrs Sue Wilson, Mrs Silvia Lidgate,  Miss S Tregunna, Mrs Sandra Corcoran, Mr Reg Gould, Rev W Hazlewood, Mrs K Horler, Mrs C Page, Mrs R Read, Mrs G Williams, Ms K Webber,  Mrs D Goode, Mrs S Hill, Mr William Lidgate, Mr J Wilson, Mr Terry Sharp, Mr John Fox, Mrs Carol Fox, Mr Chris Woolley
We thank them all for their efforts and service to our community.