Ladles, Laughter and a Seat at the Table: Inside Quorndon’s Tuesday Soup Club
Photo: Artaxerxes, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
On a grey Tuesday morning in November, the kitchen at the village hall is already busy. Onions are softening in a large pan, a volunteer is slicing bread at the speed of someone who has done it a thousand times, and the first visitors are hanging coats on the backs of chairs. The Tuesday Soup Club does not advertise loudly. It does not need to. Word has travelled, as it tends to in Quorndon, through neighbours, grandchildren and the occasional note left on a doorstep.
How It Started With a Surplus Swede
The club began modestly. A few residents had been cooking too much at home, and someone suggested using the village hall kitchen to turn spare vegetables into something warm. That first session was meant to be a one-off. A surplus swede, a few carrots and a pan of stock later, people started turning up. Not just for the soup, it turned out, but for the sitting down.
“We thought we might get six or seven people,” says Margaret Ellison, one of the founding volunteers. “We had twenty-two. And they didn’t want to leave. That was the moment we realised it was not really about the soup at all.”
The Volunteers Behind the Pans
The club runs on a rota of volunteers, some of whom cook every week and others who prefer to butter bread, wash up or simply welcome people at the door. There is no formal membership and no grand committee. Someone brings the stock cubes, someone else brings a tin of tomatoes, and a small group of regulars has quietly worked out a system that keeps the pans full without anyone feeling put upon.
“I do the washing up,” says Tom Barker, who has been helping since the early days. “I’m not much of a cook, but I can make a cup of tea and I can listen. That counts for something in a place like this.”
More Than a Bowl of Soup
For some visitors, Tuesday is the only day in the week when they speak to someone face to face. The club has become a gentle anchor for older residents, new parents, people who have recently retired and anyone who finds the colder months a bit longer than they would like. There is no pressure to be cheerful. Nobody is asked to explain why they have come.
“You can sit on your own if you want to,” one regular tells me, stirring her soup. “But you won’t, because someone will ask if you’ve had a busy week. And then you’re talking. It’s that simple.”
That simplicity is the point. The club does not offer advice or assessments. It offers a warm room, a proper bowl of soup and a seat at a table with other people. In a village the size of Quorndon, that can be a lifeline without ever announcing itself as one.
How to Join or Help
The Tuesday Soup Club meets at the village hall kitchen every Tuesday from 11.30am to 1.30pm during the colder months. There is no need to book. A suggested donation of £2 helps cover ingredients, but nobody is turned away. If you know someone who might struggle to get there, the volunteers can usually help arrange a lift.
Would-be helpers are just as welcome. The club is always glad of people who can chop vegetables, make tea, set out chairs or wash up. Donations of bread, vegetables or tins are gratefully received, though it is best to check ahead so the kitchen does not end up with forty loaves and no freezer space.
“We don’t want it to feel like a charity,” Margaret says. “We want it to feel like a kitchen where there’s always a bit more in the pan. That’s all. A bit more in the pan.”
As the room fills and the first bowls are carried to tables, it is easy to see what she means. The soup is good. The company is better. And for a few hours on a Tuesday, the village’s warmest room is not the one with the best heating — it is the one with the most chairs pulled up together.
