Fletcher Moss, now a formal garden
pubs are closing and putting the bowling greens in peril.” I refer to the success of some bowls sites I know of in and around Stockport, to which Hilda retorts: “Stockport looks after its bowling greens better than Manchester.”
Whether true or not, her comments do
reflect the wildly varying state of bowls in the region and, probably, nationally. Parks bowling clubs, such as Chapel
Street, pay councils a proportion of their membership income and, although their greens are maintained by the authority, have precious little revenue to survive on. She had earlier referred to the “injustice” of private bowling clubs based in Heaton Park, north of Manchester, utilising four flat greens that had been developed for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. “The council is spending money maintaining greens and subsidising private bowling clubs such as Heaton Hall Bowling Club, Bury Croquet Club and the Commonwealth Bowling Club, who use the greens. This seems unfair, when a parks club green, such as ours, is facing closure.” If the green does close, Chapel Street will be forced to hire from local private clubs runs by, amongst others, the British Legion. Hiring out greens can cost “hundreds of pounds a year”, Hilda adds, a price that parks clubs can ill afford.
I decided to visit several of the sites that Hilda had referred to - bowlers tend to know what’s going on in and around their ‘patch’ - and it was with a mixture of sadness and delight that I photographed park and pub greens later in the day.
Hilda’s comment that “Stockport looks after its bowling greens better than Manchester” needed further investigation, I felt. Fog Lane Park bowling green, home to two local teams, showed all the signs of being maintained, but the gate in the high steel perimeter railings was padlocked and the pavilion shut too. As Hilda had said, it seemed wasteful for a maintenance team to be keeping the green in good order while depriving
Thornfield Park
bowlers of their sporting joy. Fog Lane Park was once replete with annual bedding plants. Now, those beds are filled mostly with weeds, with some perennial plantings sprouting up among them. Far more of the open grassed areas are being left untended. The mowers had left their mark round the edges - perhaps a 3m wide cut at best. On to another site under the control of Manchester City Council - Fletcher Moss, Green Flag Award winner over a number of years. Once home to a glasshouse full of orchids, this park, walkland and ornamental garden is still a treasure, with its line of natural grass tennis courts marked out for play, and shale counterparts still in working order. Site of the fledgling Royal Society for
the Protection of Birds, Fletcher Moss is a haven of peace although, here too, the perfection of its annual plantings and alpine varieties is looking a little ragged at the edges as the pressures of maintaining the site to such high standards mount, and the evolution into more sustainable, ‘green’ management practices progresses. The crown green is no more though. It closed some years ago, to be replaced by an attractive scheme that includes perennial plantings and a four-way arbour, partly covered with trailing climbers. Walking across the lawn, the quality of the fine turf still shines through. The bowls team, who were based there, hires a green from the Didsbury Hotel next door. Crossing ‘the great divide’ into Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council’s area of responsibility, I pop into Heaton Moor to check a couple of their parks.
Once boasting two bowling greens, Heaton Moor Park now has only one, although I understand that it’s well patronised. With typical Northern friendliness, a passer-by walking his dog sees me taking a photograph of the green, stops and says: “I’ve played bowls here for forty years as my father did before me. It’s a very precise sport but an extremely satisfying one. The problem here though is the vandalism. Kids ride
their bikes over the green and it can cause real damage.”
The characterful setting has been
retained, with the original brick pavilion still standing, in keeping with much of the district’s Victorian residential style. On the other side of the park, I view the old green, with its unusual free-form edging and banked verge. A dirt track has formed round the perimeter, perhaps the tell-tale trails of those bikes the passer-by bemoaned.
Stockport is known for its innovative
leisure policy. Heaton Moor once boasted, arguably, the first sand-filled synthetic grass tennis court in Britain, installed some thirty years ago. It, and the other two courts, have been replaced by just one hard court, lined by a high fence and looking suitably vandal- resistant.
A five-minute drive away, Thornfield
Park blends tradition and modernity. The crown green is in peak condition, and it needs to be, because no fewer than five bowling clubs use it as their base. The subject of continual improvements over the years, the green is surrounded by sturdy railings and includes a modern brick pavilion/groundsman’s hut, modelled on the surrounding housing style. Overlooking it rather proudly, and the focus of a hard landscaping project all of its own, is a Green Flag wafting on top of its impressively tall pole. Noticing that the pavilion door is ajar, I knock and am greeted by the groundsman, who tells me that this green too was blighted by vandalism until the fence was erected. His estimate of the annual cost of green maintenance tallies with that at Chapel Street, although I’m not sure that Hilda, Roy and their playing colleagues would want to be put through more torture by gazing on this fine example of a green in its prime. Another five minutes away by car,
tucked away down a cobbled side street, The Nursery Inn, voted Pub of the Year nationally in 2001, still thrives under the management of Manchester brewery, Hydes.
Nearly four years ago, I visited the pub, and its beautifully manicured crown
“What Chapel Street Bowling Club need to recognise, urgently, is that the weight of expectancy falls on them to haul themselves out of the quagmire they find themselves in. A reliance on councils could prove fatal”
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