Band calls for help as it leaves home of 80 years

Dinnington Colliery Band has performed in county-wide competitions, but is lacking members

A 120-year-old brass band has called for support after it was moved from its home due to town centre regeneration works.

Dinnington Colliery Band near Rotherham is to move from its premises on Constable Lane, where members have rehearsed since 1946, to a former library on Laughton Road.

The move is part of a Rotherham Council regeneration project in Dinnington, but band manager Joanne Brookes-Wright said it could increase running costs tenfold.

She said: "At the moment our annual running costs are less than £500, but in the new building that's probably going to jump to nearer £5,000 and I don't know where we're going to get that money from."

The move will mean the band can rehearse in a space with its own toilets for the first time – and Ms Brookes-Wright is hoping the new location will also be safer.

"Where we are at the moment we have no access to drains, so we have no toilets," she said.

"We have massive issues with anti-social behaviour - even this week we've had to cancel a rehearsal because of them kicking the door in while we're trying to rehearse."

The band's current premises on Constable Lane is being regenerated under the Levelling Up-funded Dinnington Regeneration Project.

The multi-million pound scheme is designed to revitalise the high street with a new market, six retail units, refurbished shops and improved public spaces.

Kevin Fisher, the council's assistant director for property and facilities services, said the move would "enable the acquisition of land and property required to facilitate the implementation of the regeneration project".

The band, seen here in the 1950s, has been playing since 1904.

Ms Brookes-Wright said she hoped the new location would allow the band to add rehearsals on Sundays and expand its training programme.

"We have a training band but at the moment the majority of the people that come either wanted to learn at school and were told, 'oh, you'll never be any good, you're tone deaf' or people that always fancied trying it but never did," she said.

Currently the band has no members under 18 and has to borrow players from other bands to enter competitions, she added.

"Ideally, there should be at least 28 of us. The biggest struggle we have is trying to get young people to learn to play, but I teach completely free of charge and we loan the instruments free of charge."

The colliery band was started in 1904 by a group of miners who travelled from Durham to South Yorkshire to sink the mine shaft for the Dinnington colliery, which closed in 1991.

Today the band is run by Ms Brookes-Wright and includes her mother, aunt and sisters.

She plays the tenor horn and tuba and said brass bands were good for mental health.

"There's almost a form of mindfulness," she added.

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