45 yard boundaries!
As with all of our facilities the cricket net is available free of charge throughout the summer, and we also try and maintain access to mini-soccer goals. One recent addition which is proving popular is a concrete table- tennis table, which was installed this Easter at a cost, including solid base, of £2000.
In 2006, we were grateful recipients
of a Football Foundation grant which enabled us to build a circa £320,000 marvellous new pavilion, comprising function-room and kitchen for sixty visitors, ample toilet facilities and changing rooms for home and away teams and officials.
In addition to this site, the Butleigh Playing Fields Association volunteers also look after a children’s play park at the other end of the village where, once again, mini soccer goals are sited on a level and well maintained area of amenity grassland. This play park was the subject of a recent £14,000 upgrade, money which helped clear some out of use areas, install pathways and generally tidy it up. Fortunately, for the voluntary
Most football, rugby and cricket facilities are either run by clubs or parishes and, therefore, are reliant upon the diligent stewardship of volunteers
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groundstaff, the work has made maintenance a lot easier due to improved access, wider pathways etc. With its blossoming trees and sympathetic landscaping the Holm Oaks Play Park is a safe, peaceful and tranquil area for families to enjoy the children’s playground equipment. All of which would be more than satisfactory to the people who originally established the Playing Field Association, and would exceed their expectations of what could be achievable in a small village. However, the passing of time has
brought greater pressure to bear on the facilities of voluntary associations such as ourselves, as the amount of traditional council-owned, available for hire pitches has declined - so much so that, in their entire area, our local authority, Mendip District Council, currently have only one football pitch available for hire and one further training pitch, which is covered by covenant preventing organised matches from taking part! The installation of a 3G artificial surface at nearby Strode College,
available to hire by the hour, has been a godsend. Other than that, most football, rugby and all cricket facilities are either run by clubs or parishes and, therefore, are reliant upon the diligent stewardship of volunteers.
The quality of such pitches is then heavily dependant upon the aspirations and resources of the volunteers at these places. The typical facility is likely to be a donated field from a benevolent land-owner who wanted to help the community have somewhere to play or, like Butleigh, as a result of planning gain, a landowner has been required to make available a field for recreational purposes in order to be granted planning permission for housing on another site. The likeliest scenario is that you will be playing on converted pastureland, but not necessarily the best of that. Another possibility is the land is
purchased for you by a developer who, perhaps, buys your existing ground for housing/retail development and then purchases, for you, an area of land on the edge of town in order to redevelop it as sports fields. Care needs to be taken before accepting what is offered, as the land may not be that desirable - in Somerset there is a lot of low-lying land. Unfortunately, the fact that generations of farming families have been unable to drain it satisfactorily seems to get overlooked, and there are sports clubs around who must be wishing that they had had more control, before accepting what was offered to them. During the recent extreme winter, one local senior football team had to temporarily relocate to Somerton Playing Field, at a distance from their base, due to no other pitches being available locally and their own facility suffering from a severe drainage problem.
Many playing field associations are able to serve the needs of their own parishioners and, thereby, satisfy the terms of their own constitution. One or two problems are starting to stack up for those like us at Butleigh who offer their facilities to the wider footballing community.
As with everybody else, our greatest challenges are matters concerning
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