Park Action Group

The Park Action Group are a sub-group of the North Bradley Peace Memorial Hall Trust set up to redevelop a dilapidated play area in a well-used village park.

The play area project started about 3 years ago with a simple brief. “It seemed easy because we wanted to put back what we were losing. It wasn’t too ambitious. We wanted a set of swings, slide, climbing frame and a roundabout”. 

North Bradley Park Action Group covers 3 villages in Wiltshire – North Bradley, Yarnbrook and Brokers Wood – with a combined population of about 3,000 people. It’s a relatively prosperous area with lots of employment opportunities in nearby Trowbridge attracting young families into the area. “The whole area is changing as more young people are moving in from Trowbridge and even London”.

The Peace Memorial Hall and surrounding park are based in North Bradley – the largest of the 3 villages. The land was originally given for this purpose in the 1950s as part of a government scheme providing WWII soldiers with plots of land to house communal huts. “We’re in a unique position landwise. There are not many community areas where the land is not owned by either the parish or county council. It’s good because we can do what we want with it, provided that it complies with the constitution, but it’s also bad because we aren’t entitled to any council money”.

Many different groups meet in the hall, from the toddlers group to Autumn Leaves, a club for the over 50s. “In fact, the hall is not very often not used by someone!”. The park is also used regularly by two local football teams, a cricket team and the local school. In a corner of the park was a dilapidated play area, which is the only recreation area for the growing number of young children. When the play area was condemned as unsafe in 2000, the Peace Memorial Hall Trust set up a sub-group, the North Bradley Park Action Group, devoted to the task of rescuing it and making the park a place for the whole community.

The group have already raised substantial funds for the play area, including £10,000 from landfill tax, £4,500 from the Lottery, as well as smaller sums from local events. However, they recognise that they will need to maintain this effort to keep the play area from falling back into decline.

The Glass-House provided a £3000 small grant towards the cost of reviving the children’s play area and creating a community park. 

The group applied to the Glass House’s Community Design Advice Service for advice on fundraising, getting more people involved in the project and technical advice about the footpath. 

A Glass-House advisor had a meeting with the group. “When the hall committee went in they were all thinking it was going to be a waste of time. Hall meetings can be quite boring and they thought it would take up even more time. But Louisa (CDA) brought them round. They ended up really jumpy, but in a good way, up for it and enthusiastic. It was better than we’d expected, quite inspiring.” The inspiration provided by the Glass-House has led to a plan for a history of the village and surrounding area to be told in pictures along the path.

The group held village consultations and contacted West Wiltshire Council who gave them a list of preferred suppliers. The group displayed the plans around the village, letting people put comments up and then started fundraising.

In an effort to cut costs the group actively sought free local help with some of the manual labour. “Local farmers helped to shift the mound. We also got help with laying the concrete and tarmac for the basketball net from the army, who held a team bonding exercise here for 3 days.” 

Even when the community park is finally finished, the Park Action Group intends to continue holding some local fundraising events each year partly to pay for maintenance and insurance and partly because people have found that they have benefited from the feeling of community involvement and would like this to continue.

"We think that we were very fortunate in being selected by the Glass-House to assist us with our project. Not only have they inspired us with new ideas for our 'community park' and pointed us towards a grant from Trafford Hall towards the proposed footpath, but they have also helped indirectly with other fundraising.”

“We knew that in order to keep things going we needed to put things in bit by bit so people could see something happening. We calculated that we needed £40,000 for the whole thing but broke this down into achievable phases, so we could install things gradually to keep people interested and show them we were achieving things. The fitness trail and the benches were first. These were important because they were for both young and old. Our goal and motto has been ‘something for everyone.”