£1M INTO OUR WONDERFUL PARKS
reclaimed Nature
into our wonderful parks. £1m
Today the award-winning park extends to 170 hectares – about 450 acres – with more than a third taken up by a Local Nature Reserve (LNR), attracting around 700,000 visitors a year. Once a site of mining, metalworking and railways, the park now includes play areas, an events arena, amphitheatre, bandstand, information centre, Wonderland visitor attraction for younger children, aerial rope courses and adventure golf, in addition to the pools, pit mounds, heathland, woodlands, meadows, grassland and picnic areas of the reserve. The Friends of Telford Town Park work alongside Telford and Wrekin Council to help maintain the extensive site. Friends chairman Chris Pettman explained: “There are around 28 of us at the moment with around a dozen regularly turning out for four hours every Wednesday to work at the park, usually concentrating around the formal gardens. “People don’t realise quite how far the park extends – it is around a mile and a half long by three quarters of a mile wide. As well as the LNR it has been designated a country park by the Government’s Natural England agency. It is one of the finest town parks in the country, a real jewel in our crown. Half a century ago Telford Town Park was a ‘brownfield’ site, a former industrial area left derelict and gradually reclaimed by nature. The creation of the new town in the 1960s and 1970s saw the site chosen as a ‘green lung’, at the heart of the community.
A jewel in the crown of Telford. Friends of Telford Town Park Chairman Chris Pettman.
“Before Covid we had big plans to recruit more volunteers and expand our work into the nature reserve. We have built up quite a bit of equipment over the years and desperately need new storage facilities. We’d also like to install a new eco-power system across the park.” Formed back in 2003, the Friends’ work over the past two decades was recognised last year when it received the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. Chris and his team now have their fingers crossed for a share of the extra £1m committed by the council to improving its seven borough parks as more than £16m invest programme. The council has committed the new funding to an ambitious programme of maintaining the Green Flag award standard across many of its parks while bringing more of them to that standard so they are among the best in the country. This builds on the continuing work of recent years, which most recently saw Dawley Park achieve Green Flag status. Right back when Telford was still on planners’ drawing boards, large
stretches of parkland were key to the concept of the new town. Parks remain at the heart of our communities as places to meet, play, exercise, relax. Telford & Wrekin Council continues to work in partnership with town and parish councils and Friends groups to manage the sites to a high standard – recognised by the awarding of Green Flag status. The aim of the new investment will be to maintain these high standards across all of the borough’s treasured parks.
TOTALLY TELFORD
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