ALTHOUGH originally sited elsewhere in the village, Llanymynech Bowling Club (LBC) has been on the King George V playing field on Station Road in the village for over 80 years living under a covenant restricting their buildings to temporary wooden structures and not permanent bricks and mortar.

LBC now has around 50 active members and throughout the year welcomes upwards of 800 members, competitors and visitors alike to the club from around the region. The recent demise of the club’s dilapidated second hand toilet facilities was therefore of urgent concern to club members who did not have the resources to finance such a rebuild.

An application to The Mary Hignett Bequest Fund proved successful with a grant approved to meet a large part of the costs of the toilet refurbishment. Oswestry Rotary Club President David Davies said: “It has been a pleasure to work with Llanymynech Bowling Club on this project. Mary Hignett’s wish was that her bequest should be used mainly to support local small projects in the areas of sport and the arts. The Bowling Club’s application ticked all our boxes and we are pleased to see that the project has turned out so well.”

Rotary Club members went along recently to see for themselves how the pennies had been spent.

Standing outside the newly built plylined insulated building, providing for both male and female facilities, LBC Chairman Kevin Jones said: “The Bowling Club is extremely grateful to Oswestry Rotary Club and the Mary Hignett Bequest for their generous grant towards our project.

The new facilities were very much needed but this type of capital project is extremely difficult to fund solely through the subscriptions of our members when the day-to-day running costs represent such a high proportion of our income: the grant made all the difference!”

Invitations to apply for grants from the Mary Hignett Bequest are issued in the autumn although ad-hoc applications may be considered if the budget allows.

(l-r) Roger Candlin Secretary LBC, Rtn David Davies President of the Rotary Club of Oswestry and Chairman of the Mary Hignett Bequest Fund Committee, Kevin Jones Chairman of LBC and Paul Smith LBC Greenkeeper