D
eep in the heart of the Vale of Glamorgan countryside, and adjacent to the Vale Hotel, Golf and Spa Resort, lies the 17th century Hensol Castle Conference Centre and its 150 acres of estate grounds. Some of us might perhaps recognise its interior from recent
episodes of Dr Who, where it doubled as that of No.10 Downing Street. Beautiful as its interior is, however, we are more interested for the moment in what has recently gone on outside its walls. The castle is an impressive structure, but, for sometime
before its acquisition by Leekes Retail and Leisure Group, the grounds in front of the castle had been somewhat under utilised. The Group also owns the Vale Hotel Golf and Spa Resort, and so had already greatly improved the infrastructure around the site, and its grounds staff have considerable expertise in grounds maintenance, as witnessed by the quality of its two golf courses. So, the new owners saw an opportunity to improve and develop some of the grounds of the castle into additional sports facilities. The first phase commenced in the summer of 2006 with the construction of 15,000m2
of much needed,
good quality, natural turf training facilities for the Football Association of Wales.
“It was never going to be easy to develop a potentially politically and environmentally sensitive site” said Gerald Leeke. “The local planning authority obviously wanted a sympathetic development in keeping with these beautiful surroundings and, of course, this was exactly what we wanted too.” Thankfully, experienced assistance in this type of development was available from Cardiff based GEO Turf Consulting Limited who specialise in the design and engineering of natural turf sports facilities. Led by Jonathan Smith, himself an expert with over 20
years experience in implementing both small and large schemes, with recent projects including the Exeter Chiefs Rugby Club, Swansea City Football Club training pitches and advising The Highways Agency on the development of Wetherby Racecourse. GEO Turf Consulting was the natural choice for the project, especially as their main offices are in the local Cardiff area.
“Our work normally involves the development of natural turf facilities on both green and brownfield sites. We assist clients from the early feasibility and planning consent stages, through to detailed design, managing contracts, and then on to completion.” “We also, of course, help manage the all-important first years maintenance following handover to the client. Unfortunately, we also sometimes have to act as fire fighters to rescue projects that have all too often suffered from a combination of poor design, construction and supervision. Thankfully the Hensol Castle project was not one of these. It did however provide a number of interesting challenges for us. There were one or two acts of God which kept us and
Welshman Steve Evans of White Horse Contractors very much at home while inspecting his 300mm diameter cut off drain
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