A VICTORIAN hall in Longwood is celebrating its 150th anniversary – and a time capsule buried beneath the building will be opened to mark the major milestone.

The capsule was discovered beneath the foundation stone during a £42,000 scheme to build a new stone and glass porch outside the landmark The Mechanics Hall on Longwood Gate in Longwood.

It will be opened at the start of a weekend of events to celebrate the hall’s anniversary.

The weekend of events from this Friday to Sunday includes an open evening on Friday when the time capsule will be opened.

It is understood there are old documents and coins in the glass bottle.

On Saturday, Kirklees deputy mayor Julie Stewart-Turner will officially open the porch before a sell-out black and white ball featuring the JB Dance Band.

On Sunday it’s family fun with a circus skills workshop at the hall from 2pm to 5pm. The entrance fee is £2 and people will have the chance to learn skills from plate-spinning to juggling.

The hall is now home to people both old and young with a couple of new groups just set up.

A youth group for 13 to 19-year-olds run by Kirklees Early Years Service meets on Wednesday nights from 6.30pm to 9pm and they can play Nintendo Wii, table football, pool, table tennis, board games or surf the internet.

The Space Project for the over 55s meets on Thursday afternoons from 1.30pm to 4pm and offers similar pastimes along with carpet bowls, darts and board games.

A dedicated band of volunteers led by hall manager Derek Fairbank has put the hall right back at the centre of Longwood life in recent years.

It has undergone major refurbishment work and won £250 from the Examiner’s Community Chest in 2006 which they invested in a charity scheme to provide them with enough paint to redecorate a large part of the hall.

They used hundreds of gallons to repaint the impressive hall – which features a stage and maple sprung dance floor – along with the stairway down to other parts of the building and the newly-refurbished toilets.

It has a library in a room downstairs which was untouched for 20 years, but the hall won last year’s Examiner Community Chest outright and used the £2,800 to transform the library into a new computer room – complete with new ceiling.

It also meant the hall’s CCTV and alarm system could be linked to a computer at a member’s home so it can be continually monitored.

As a Mechanics Institute, the hall offered millworkers the chance to enhance their learning and on its opening day the roads around were totally clogged as so many hundreds were eager to visit it.

The Institute had a penny bank in the 1800s – and the hatch where the cashier sat is still there.

It then became a school, long before schools became compulsory, and at its peak it had 140 pupils in four classrooms.

Longwood will be the focus of All Our Yesterdays nostalgia spread in tomorrow’s Examiner to coincide with the 150th anniversary.