Newnham Village Hall was in danger of shutting for good after too few people offered to serve as officers on the management committee, leaving a couple of people over-stretched working in several roles.

But last Thursday three new committee members took their places meaning the hall now has enough officers to keep going.

The new chairman is Simon Pearce, who has lived in the village for seven years.

He said: “I use the village hall a lot, but the community was in danger of losing it.

“If the committee had folded the hall would have been taken over by the Charities Commission and out of the control of the village.

“I was involved as a director of Daventry and District Housing, however I had to give that up when I broke my leg.

“Now I’m getting back on top of things I was looking to put something back into the community and this seemed like a good way. Newnham is a village that when I first arrived impressed me by the number of things the villagers do together.

“There’s numerous groups that do things and a lot of them use the village hall.

“The only time I get to see other people from the village is at all these functions at the hall.”

Joining Mr Pearce is correspondence secretary Joy Jones and minute secretary Sarah Dolan. The treasurer remains Sue Venner.

As reported in the Daventry Express in June, the management committee was threatened with folding when Janet Ashwell, who was chairman and secretary, said she would stand down at the end of July as the roles were getting to be too much.

An emergency public meeting on June 16 was held to get people to step forward, and it was at this meeting that Mr Pearce decided to get involved.

Mr Pearce said: “We don’t want to make any major changes – we just want to make sure that the hall is running in the most effective way to generate revenue.

“We have the Autumn Fayre coming up on October 4 which is an important event, and we also need to work to tackle damp in the committee room but there are groups in the village, like the parish council, that could support us.”