Facilities | Clubs & societies
Facilities
In the 1950s the Humbie village hall was a wooden ex-army hut erected in 1921, and in serious need of replacement. Many whist drives and dances were held, in addition to activities such as indoor bowling. In 1973, a new hall on a larger site replaced it. This was, and continued in 2000 to be, used for dances, concerts, whist drives, auctions, and exhibitions, and for private parties. During the 1980s and 1990s the hall was also regularly used for a playgroup for the village juniors and for a lunch club for the village seniors
Clubs and societies
Clubs and groups recorded in the East Lothian Yearbooks 1945-70, as all being active post-war, but discontinued by 1960 were: the British Legion, the curling club, the pigeon club, and the Scottish League of Wives & Mothers. The Rev Bain in 1953 recorded (p260) that five ‘clubs’ were run by the church but that some, including the Scouts and the Guides were at that time in abeyance ‘due to lack of leaders’.
Two groups, the Woman’s Guild and the (Scottish) Women’s Rural Institute (WRI) were in continuous existence throughout the period. The WRI produced the 1966 history of Humbie, and the 1989 addendum, which were together published as Gleanings of Humbie Parish.
The Fala, Soutra & District History & Heritage Society was formed in the 1980s, and has included a number of Humbie residents in its membership.
Humbie has never had an inn or public house. Although Johnstounburn House developed as a guesthouse and hotel from the 1940s (seen as ‘a sign of the times’ by the Rev Bain) it always aimed at the upper end of the visitor market. Up to the 1970s, farm workers often cycled significant distances to inns at Juniper Lea, Ormiston, Pencaitland and Gifford. The changing nature and increased mobility of the Humbie population had by the 1980s, in spite of the tightening in drink-driving laws, created a greater use of hotels and restaurants further afield, especially those in Gifford, Haddington and towards Edinburgh.