A long-awaited newly-built village sports pavilion has been unveiled as the ‘pride of the community.’

A ‘revolution’ in community sport provision has risen from the rubble of the previous dilapidated 50-year-old building in Horrabridge’s Fillace Park.

The new £500,000 building, begun in September 2024, is the culmination of decades of fundraising and grant applications and is set to be a focal point for a wide range of community activities as well as sport. A Easter opening celebration is planned.

Horrabridge Rangers Sports Association secretary (HRSA) Ian Mulholland, the project’s driving force, said the pavilion was a ‘long-held dream’ realised to create a ‘vibrant community social and sporting hub’.

He said: “We’re delighted at this fantastic news for Horrabridge and our wider football family.

“This has been decades of years of hard work and perseverance in the making, along with community fundraising. So, to finally see the pavilion completed for the community of Horrabridge feels incredibly special.

“Thank you to everyone who has supported us along the journey especially Steve Roche for his time and extraordinary effort securing funding to get this project to this stage.”

The new Fillace Park Community Pavilion has been built by local firm Jonathan Case Builders & Contractors Ltd.

Ian said: “Whether you are a keen footballer, a local club member, or simply someone who enjoys a beautiful green space, the Fillace Park Pavilion will have something to offer everyone.”

He described the pavilion as an ‘investment in the physical and mental wellbeing of residents’ which would encourage healthy lifestyles and ‘meaningful social connections.’

This project has been made possible thanks to the ‘incredible’ support of major grant funders and partners the Football Foundation, the government’s Levelling Up Fund and Horrabridge Parish Council.

Ian added: “We are also hugely grateful for the many grant funders, community fundraising efforts, local business support and personal contributions that have helped turn this project from ambition into reality. Every contribution has made a difference.”

He thanked volunteers, trustees, partners, sponsors, supporters, players, families and community members for their “commitment, belief and hard work”. “This has truly been a whole-club and whole-community achievement,” he said.

The team which originally set up Horrabridge Rangers Football Club (part of HRSA) over 50 years ago, set out three aims, to create a children’s football club and successful seniors’ club and to have a pavilion. The new state-of-the-art pavilion is the final realisation of this ambition.

Steve Roche, one of the key members of the pavilion project, said the has said the project’s completion showed how “tenacity and never giving up pays off if you have a good case and the community is behind you.”

The new pavilion would become the pride of the village, he predicted, offering scope for many more activities than the old pavilion.

Jonathan Case, the project building contractor, said the new pavilion provided much more versatile spaces for sport and social events and was more than twice the size of the old one with kitchen, showers, changing rooms for multi-use.