Paul Turpin, Alexi Dimond and Marieanne Elliot, the three Green Party Councillors for Gleadless Valley, have supported Meersbrook Park Bowling Club with a grant to fund a new storage container at the club.
Cllr Paul Turpin, a recent convert to Crown Green Bowling, said, “We are always happy to support community groups in any way we can. It was good to have this opportunity to fund a secure storage unit at Meersbrook Park, following our funding of a similar storage unit at Herdings Park Bowling Club last year.
“Meersbrook Park Bowling Club is a historic organisation, well over 100 years old, and we are delighted to see that it is going from strength to strength with a growing membership and a developing supporter base.
“We look forward to seeing what develops in terms of community engagements and outreach this club comes up with next, as it becomes a centre of the community once more.”
Jim Szemeti, who is leading on the development of facilities at the club, explained that acquiring the fireproof container was a vital step in the club’s plans to extend community involvement at the club. “We are working really hard to bring our second green into full use, which will allow more people from our community to play bowls. The vision is for the bottom green to be wheelchair accessible and to be available for social bowling when competitive matches are taking place on the top green. We also want to be able to play all year round – weather permitting. To achieve this we need to do a lot of work on the bottom green, which has been uncared for for several years. We need a lot of specialist equipment and need to store that on site. Some of this machinery uses flammable fuels and we haven’t been able to store the equipment or the fuel at Meersbrook Park. This has really held us back. Now we have a secure space for storage and the container will free up more space in the existing, wooden building – space we can put to a better use. This is a great day for the club and we are really grateful to Paul, Alexi and Marieanne.”
To get a container of this size and specification into the grounds and erected is far from straight forward. Jim explained that his heart sunk when the supplier declared that the low-hanging trees near the park entrance meant that the delivery of the container parts would not be at the gate of the club as planned. Instead volunteers had to carry each segment of the container up the park and to the site.
Luckily a fine team of strapping bowlers were up to the task and, as the pictures show, they did a fine job!
