About 200 people turned out to celebrate the official opening of Cowling’s new village hall on Saturday.

Prior to cutting the ribbon, Skipton and Ripon MP Julian Smith praised the hard work that had been carried out to complete the hall.

He said: “I’d like to pay tribute to the many people on the management committee who made this village hall possible.

“They’ve gone through a lot of trials and tribulations, but they have worked flat out to get this building ready for opening.

“It’s a fantastic modern building that’s accessible and shows a good use of stone. It will be a brilliant asset to the people of this community.”

Committee member Victoria Simmons said: “It’s nice to see so many people in the hall. It’s turned out better than we could have imagined.

“Just a few months ago, there were trees growing where the floor is now. To get the building to this in such a short space of time is fantastic.”

David Rowe and Glen Salt, who took over as co-chairmen of the Cowling Village Hall Management Committee six months ago, have overseen a £170,000 project to finish the building, which was initially put up by developer Skipton Properties in 2007.

“I’m chuffed to bits with it,” said Mr Rowe, who served as the project manager.

“When you consider that only nine months ago we were given a quote of £350,000 to finish the building, I thought we did really well to equip it for about the price we did.”

Most of the funding was raised through the £125,000 sale of the old village hall. Cowling Parish Council donated £20,000 and £11,000 was raised through local fundraising events.

A grant of £9,500 came from the Big Lottery Fund’s Awards for All programme and the Garfield West Foundation provided a £10,000 grant, which paid for a kitchen.