Since April 2011, the village music club, St Boswells Live! has been running events in the Main Hall, many of them extremely successfully, through thick and thin (few will forget the face freezing night when Boo Hewerdine performed in a sweater to an audience clad in even more, after the heating failed). When audiences dwindled in 2012, the club was rescued by Scottish rock band Frightened Rabbit, who packed an adoring crowd into our very own Village Hall…

That charitable act saved the club, and allowed it to continue bringing extremely high quality music to St Boswells. When the hall closed for refurbishment, St Boswells Live! played an important part in making the stage performance-friendly, and designing the lighting system that is now in place. The club moved away for one gig, but then moved back with an opening night featuring local legend Archie Fisher – the SBL! committee even played a few songs.

Despite the hall looking great, the sound was suffering. With a sports floor and lots of insulation and double glazing, a big echo was inevitable – the new curtains helped quite a bit, but it was clear the creaking sound system had seen its day, and simply couldn’t cope with the demands of a big hall, complex sound mixes and old age (it comes to us all eventually). With this, and the desire to give something more back to the village, St Boswells Live! embarked on a fundraising effort and voila! in April 2015 the club was given £10,000 by Awards for All.

The new sound system was designed and installed by the same company responsible for the lighting, Black Light, consisting of a top quality integrated wiring system for signals and data, a state-of-the-art Allen & Heath mixing desk, and 2000W of QSC speakers fixed to the front of the stage.

This was ready for use in time for the Village Week opening show, along with Boswells Got Talent, which rocked the hall to its rafters. The horrible echo has gone, and the sound system has been made available to the Village Hall for loan out to all hall users who need it. As St Boswells Live! promoter, Keith Farnish said, at the end of the last show: “I’ve just realised, we have everything we ever wanted. It’s wonderful.”