THE neighbours of Knutsford’s masonic hall say they have been forced to clean up urine and vomit outside their home following parties at the venue.

Larkspur Lodge, formerly known as the Leicester Warren Hall, is currently having its licence reviewed by Cheshire East Council.

It follows a string of complaints from neighbours Adele and David Wright, which date back to 2010, in addition to complaints from three other families in nearby Beggarmans Lane.

At the first hearing of the licence review on Thursday, mother-of-two Mrs Wright revealed that her young family’s lives are being made ‘an absolute misery’ by noise and anti-social behaviour.

She said: “When we bought our family home back in 2006 there were no problems at all.

“It was a beautiful, peaceful place to live which we had made into a family home for our now-young children.”

Mrs Wright told councillors that the masonic hall, in Bexton Lane, was only used for Freemasons’ meetings when she and her husband David first moved in – but it began to be used for weddings and parties three years later under the name Leicester Warren Hall.

Mrs Wright said that during parties at the venue, music has been so loud that her family can identify the songs played – while her family has also suffered from bass vibrations, car doors and shouting when events come to an end, a loud outdoor PA system and smashed glass outside their home.

She said these issues are ‘not untypical’ – and that the family has even seen guests vomiting outside their home.

“This is never cleared up because nobody returns to the masonic hall afterwards to clear anything up,” Mrs Wright added.

“So we have seen sick which has been left there, we’ve had to clean urine off the back wall of our house on two separate occasions.

“People come round to our house – not on a Saturday – and say ‘what a beautiful home’. And we are too embarrassed to say that we’ve got ourselves in this situation.”

The family first contacted CEC’s environmental health team for advice in 2010 and believed they had come to a resolution with the hall’s licence holder a year later – but none of the work proposed was completed.

Mrs Wright told councillors that her family briefly put their house on the market in 2014 – but she felt that ‘as a mother’ she could not pass the problems onto another family.

Simon Taylor, the solicitor representing Mr and Mrs Wright, said: “We are not talking about trying to shut the masonic hall down. That is not on our agenda at all.

“What we are looking for is robust management of the events so that nuisance and anti-social behaviour is controlled.”

The hall was taken over by the team behind popular Knutsford wedding venue The Belle Epoque last month – and it was rebranded as Larkspur Lodge.

Matthew Mooney, the new licensee at the hall, said: “We have broad experience, we have a wedding venue in Knutsford that has been there for 45 years. We’ve never had a licensing issue in 45 years, we have had an exemplary record.

 

“We are very used to dealing with neighbours and making sure that if they have issues we sit down, we speak to them, we discuss how we can mitigate any issues if they do arise. That’s what we have done, and we have extremely happy neighbours where we are.

“We will transfer all those values to the new venue. The word has been ‘robust management’ – that is exactly what we do, that’s exactly what I do, that’s why we do what we are doing.”

He added that architects are currently working on a ‘more substantial’ entrance to block out noise, while a noise limiting device can be added to the hall’s sound system and a new fence will be erected and monitored to prevent guests disturbing the Wright family.

Cllr Stan Davies, chairman of the committee that will decide on the hearing, welcomed the steps being taken towards resolving the matter.

He told the Wrights: “You’ve heard it all before and it has never happened, but you haven’t heard it in front of councillors.”

The hearing was adjourned until a future meeting.