page_title: Westgate Hall, Canterbury
section_title: Community use
hierarchical_section_title: Westgate Hall, Canterbury / Usage of hall / Community use
caption_attribution_description: A small section of background detail from a photograph in the Barrett Collection, showing what is now the foyer and offices section of the Westgate Hall having survived the 1944 bombing of Canterbury in World War II. The main photo, from which this extract was taken, showed the bombed Barretts premises in the foreground. Full archive, library and online searches have been made to ascertain the name of the photographer, without success.
context_page_description: Westgate Hall is a hundred-year-old drill hall and community space in a Conservation area of Canterbury, Kent, notable for being the subject of extended public controversy since October 2009, when the City of Canterbury budget 2010−2011 threatened to have the building demolished. The building is now leased by Curzon Cinemas.
context_section_description: It may have been called St Peter's Mission Hall as early as 1903, as there was a hall of that name in Welby Square, but no drill hall is mentioned in trade directories. It was one of the conference halls used by the Mothers’ Union in 1927. Probably during its early years until 1914, and since the early 1970s, it has been a community centre. Along with the Beehive, the hall was the background to the beginning of the current Canterbury music scene. The first regular music group to play here was the Wilde Flowers.
  It is now a dance hall with sprung floor used by the people of Canterbury and by students from the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University. It has a bar open eleven hours a week, is used for events and fairs, for ballroom dancing and as a conference venue, and accommodates hundreds of people. Local clubs and societies use the hall. The University of Kent uses the hall for the collection of robes on graduation days. This is also a venue for serious events such as Holocaust Memorial Day. The Council itself uses the Westgate Hall to count votes, and sports events such as 2007 Tour de France finish stages at the hall. Blood donor sessions are held here, besides Weight Watchers, gigs and wedding receptions. National Childbirth Trust hold their nearly-new sales in the hall twice a year.
caption: Westgate Hall 1944, showing original Victorian design of what is now foyer and offices section of hall
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