EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS


Crosf ields School


Under pressure S


Crosfields School is one of the leading co-educational schools in the country, educating pupils between the ages of three and thirteen. Grounds Manager Stuart Gower has had a varied career, spanning forty years, and we paid him a visit to find out why this is the opportunity he couldn’t turn down


tuart found his way into the industry whilst unemployed in the 1980s. His first job as a groundsman was at the Metropolitan Police Football


Club Ground (Imber Court Sports Club) in East Molesey. Stuart explains: “It was a bit daunting at first, but I slowly settled in. I was given the opportunity to go to College at Merrist Wood, Surrey where I gained my City & Guilds Levels 1 and 2 in Sports Turf Management and my PA1, 2 and 6 spraying certificates. I was at the sports club for nine years, looking after first-class football, tennis, rugby, cricket and bowls - we once even hosted American football.” “In 1998, I had to leave for personal reasons and joined the Royal Mail but, by 2005, I was getting the bug to get back in the industry. I was given the opportunity to work at the Hurlingham Club, Fulham with Peter Craig and Neil Harvey and, as you can expect, this was a great job in which I gained some valuable experience. After several years, I joined Nick Eastway at The Royal Wimbledon Golf Course, trying my hand at greenkeeping. Then, in 2010, I took a position as Deputy Head Groundsman at Rokeby School in Kingston; this was a brilliant little job based off-site from the school at Worcester Park. The standards were very high for a school and they have


Grounds Manager, Stuart Gower


actually just got into the top one hundred cricket schools in the country. I left there in 2014, before joining Ibstock Place School in Roehampton as Site Manager. This was a small site with two full-size football pitches and a lot of training areas, but then, nineteen months ago, this job came up at


I enjoy it, but you never know what’s around the corner. The industry is changing daily; one minute you have a product, the next it has been taken off the market


72 PC April/May 2020


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