Margaret Garton

Margaret Garton has spent a large part of her life serving the community in voluntary roles. However, for the most part her roles have not been what you might consider conventional volunteering.

Practical volunteering tasks have never been Margaret’s forte, but over the years she has revealed an exceptional flair for fundraising, in particular putting pen to paper to help organisations access grants and get viable projects off the ground. She has also played a significant part in raising the profile of the humble village hall in Devon and across the UK.

Margaret spent her early life in London and two of the first things that struck her when she moved to Yelverton with her young family, were the strong sense of community support in rural areas and the vital role played by the village hall. She became clerk to Buckland Monachorum Parish Council and got involved in a fundraising campaign to help the residents of Milton Combe purchase and run their local hall. She soon realised that it was unrealistic to expect a small community to raise the amount required, so she started applying for grants. In 1977 a group of villagers walked from Milton Combe to County Hall in Exeter to publicise their mission and as a result, the community soon purchased the hall and its grounds, after raising £3600 through successful grant applications and fundraising. Following this success Margaret went on to help Buckland Monachorum take over ownership of its village hall, as well as support the fundraising campaign to build Yelverton War Memorial Hall.

By the 80s it was widely recognised that a meeting place for clubs, organisations and social events was the lifeblood of rural communities. Margaret was invited to be a trustee for the Community Council of Devon (now Devon Communities Together) and in the course of her work she visited every parish in Devon, meeting residents engaged in raising money to fund a local community-run hall. She built up an excellent rapport with numerous Devon villages and in 1999 she was approached by the Lord Lieutenant to become a Deputy Lieutenant of Devon, where her role frequently involved accompanying members of the royal family on visits to the county. Also as a consequence of her work with Devon communities she was invited to join the Millenium Commission which was responsible for awarding Lottery money to projects to mark the new millennium. Margaret became one of nine people tasked with dispersing £10 million, in the space of one intensive year, to communities involved in new-build hall projects across the UK – including Clearbrook village hall. In total she spent 30 years working with the Community Council, including four years as chairman, and she is full of praise for its staff who continue to be committed to helping voluntary activity in Devon.

Raising money to help the relationship counselling charity Relate, to purchase its own premises in Plymouth about 20 years ago, was one of her more challenging fundraising experiences. However, she raised £85,000, which included securing £25,000 of the amount in a competition run by TSB, where she had to put her creative writing skills to the test and submit 500 words outlining a fundraising idea for her charity. Her idea revolved around asking people to donate a sum of money which related to the number of happy years of marriage they had enjoyed – and it hit the mark taking the gold award in the competition.

Margaret has also been very involved in her local community – she was a West Devon Borough councillor for sixteen years and also held the office of mayor. She helped to raise funds to build Yelverton’s tennis courts and has been a staunch supporter of Yelverton Community Projects (YCP) since it started 22 years ago. Over the years YCP has grown and now encompasses three strands: Yelvercare, where approximately 40 volunteers assist 100 residents with transport, as well as a monthly luncheon club for elderly residents; Yelverton Play Park, which is financed, constructed and maintained by volunteers; and the monthly showings of Yelverton Cinema in St. Paul’s Church hall. Margaret still fulfils a monthly stint manning the phone to book in transport requests and match them with drivers.

Amongst this abundance of activity, there is one act that Margaret remembers in particular, and that is a feasibility study she was asked to carry out in 1994 on the need for a community foundation in Devon. She concluded that there was a need and although it took a number of years to establish, Devon Community Foundation now has an endowment of £6 million and is making a real difference by supporting and enabling local people to ‘achieve inspiring change in their communities’. Despite all Margaret’s achievements, she still finds the sheer scale of local voluntary activity around her very humbling and her parting words to me were: “Please don’t make me sound like a big I am”. I hope I haven’t done that, but I do think that her contribution to the local community and the wider community of Devon and beyond, is quite remarkable.

Rosemary Best