Educational Establishments
Seven years of projects!
M
It’s been nearly seven years since we visited Taunton School and, in that period, Head Groundsman, Mark Jolliffe has undertaken a number of projects to further enhance and improve the sports facilities.
In this article, Mark provides an overview of the work undertaken within an already busy groundcare schedule
ark Jolliffe is Head Groundsman at Taunton School. He and his staff are responsible for looking after fourteen hectares of grass and
formal gardens. Taunton School was founded in 1847 and is an independent co-ed school for around 1100 pupils from ages 2 to 18 years. There are about 400 boarders. It is also an Investors in People establishment. The school is also a thriving business and caters for conferences, seminars, weddings, parties and a host of other events as well as having a sports club membership. Head Groundsman is Mark Jolliffe. Originally from Oxfordshire, Mark started out as a volunteer groundsman for his local village club. From there he went full time at Radley College, near Oxford, and worked up to Deputy Head Groundsman in 1998. He attended Sparsholt College in Hampshire where he completed NVQ levels 2 and 3 in Horticulture and Sports Turf Management.
He left Radley in the summer of 2002 to move down to the west country and take up his position as Head Groundsman at Taunton School.
Mark and his team look after not only the senior school, but the prep school, the pre prep school, nursery school and TSI (Taunton School International) - the
international study centre at the school for foreign students. He also looks after all the gardens.
In this article, he details the work he has undertaken since our last visit in 2007.
Durrant Project
Conversion of a shale hockey pitch to a sand dressed artificial pitch - March to July 2013
The existing shale hockey pitch was converted to a Tiger Turf sand dressed artificial pitch by Bernhard’s Sports Surfaces. This £650,000 project was completed two months ahead of schedule thanks to some very favourable weather conditions, and despite few unforeseeable circumstances. First, an old Victorian culvert running under the shale pitch had to be filled in. When running at full capacity, the shale pitch would flood and tonnes of shale material would be washed away, leaving the stone base exposed. The last such event, in February 2009, after heavy rainfall, combined with snow thaw, required 180 tonnes of shale material to be replaced; the clean up operation was significant. This culvert has now been re- routed around the pitch. The culvert was excavated in several places and concrete was dropped in to form several ‘plugs’. Once set, each
Durrant project: the original shale pitch
Durrant project: plugging the old culvert
Durrant project: installing the drainage
Durrant project: tarmac with wet pour shockpad
96 PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2014
Durrant project: laying the carpet
Durrant project: finished!
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