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Volunteers help to upkeep coastal watch house

Tom MacDougall,North East and Cumbriaand
Matt Bailey,BBC Radio Newcastle
Mick English Volunteers help to oil the paintwork of the fence. Many appear to be pensioner-age. They hunch over with brushes and pots of the amber oil. In the distance is the sea and coastline under a cloudy sky.Mick English
Watch House charity trustee Mick English said the job was done in three hours thanks to volunteers, but would have taken a week to do solo

Volunteers have been helping with the upkeep of a Grade II listed coastal building.

Cullercoats Watch House opened in 1879 as the home of the local volunteer life brigade and is now a community hub. It has been shut since May while interior renovations are completed by the charity which runs it.

However, the exterior of the building has still needed to be looked after, and volunteers joined the charity on Friday to help with the annual job of oiling its paintwork.

Trustee Mick English said: "We were very pleased with the way it went, it was a really successful day - way beyond our expectations."

He said the job would have otherwise taken "a week or more", but with the help of around 25 volunteers it was finished in three hours.

Supplied Cullercoats Watch House, a beige stone-brick building with an arched roof of red tiles. The roof is lined by woodwork which is painted green. A similarly painted fence surrounds the building where it looks onto the sea, underneath a canopy where the roof juts out. The most striking feature is that it has a clock tower with a spire which rises into the sky.Supplied
Interior renovations are expected to be finished by autumn, when the building will reopen as a community hub

Following the success, he said the charity was thinking about inviting volunteers to help with the job every year.

"Hopefully, they'll get drawn into their emotions and want to come back for more," he joked.

In 2020, the building was turned into a community hub after spending decades as a snooker club.

But just a year later the building was deemed as being in need of "urgent repair" due to damage from the seaside weather.

Mick English Matt Bailey, a man in his 30s, oiling the sage-green paint of a wooden fence with a little brush and a plastic pot of varnish. He is wearing bright blue surgical gloves.Mick English
BBC Radio Newcastle's Matt Bailey joined volunteers who were helping to oil the woodwork of Cullercoats Watch House

A programme of renovations started in 2023, expected to cost £350,000, and upgrades to the exterior of the building have already been completed.

The full renovation and reopening of the building is expected to be complete in autumn, which English said "hopefully, will let us present it in a better light".

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