How Sheffield parks have been improved this year - and one will look 'drastically different'

There has been plenty for the Sheffield Council team to get stuck into, from designing a new pavilion at the Bolehills Recreation Ground, Crookes, new parks across the city and leading many consultations, including one on proposals for a cafe and activity hub in Bingham Park, near Ecclesall, in the last three months alone.

A further 12 projects are also planned for the first three months of 2022.

One of the major projects the team has worked on this year is conservation and restoration work at Sheffield General Cemetery, a Victorian cemetery and park in Sharrow.

Work at the cemetery has been planned for more than four years, and the team are working with local residents and local businesses.

Claire Watts, project officer, said: “We want to walk that balance between repairing and conserving the heritage of the site, improving the accessibility of the site and also protecting the wildlife. We know those three things are important to all visitors.

"Somewhere like General Cemetery arouses people’s passions and that’s a great thing to work with when you’re doing a project. It doesn’t always make it straightforward.

"We have good relationships with everyone so we can all disagree and that’s okay. You can have robust discussions about what’s the best approach. The scheme we have come up with now gets that balance right.

"There are some parts of the cemetery that we will just let be for wildlife, they won’t have any intervention at all.

"There are others where we will be repairing the paths – if you tried pushing a wheelchair up the entrance path it would be really uncomfortable.”

More than 87,000 people were buried in the general cemetery between its opening in 1836 and 1978, when it closed for burial. Some Sheffielders are also buried in the cemetery’s famous catacombs and Claire revealed that a layer of them is to be removed to make the area look ‘drastically different.’

Claire added: "One big change is at the catacombs, a unique feature in the cemetery. An extra level was added on in the 1930s.

"We found that has significantly destabilised the layers below. “We took a difficult decision to apply to remove the top layer of the catacombs and that has been agreed with Historic England. “It is going to look drastically different. It will improve the views between the river and it will actually connect the cemetery up. At the moment the concrete wall cuts off the upper path from the lower path in a way that is really oppressive.

“Nobody who is buried at the catacombs will be disturbed by that process. The catacombs notion came from a continental Victorian idea of what a beautiful glorious cemetery looks like. It doesn’t work in Sheffield. You need a Mediterranean climate.

"You have to get a lot of people on board to get these changes through and that’s why it takes quite a long time. The development stage of the project has probably been for three years of more. It’s worth taking that time because what we are trying to do here is work that safeguards the cemetery for the next 100 years. We hope that most people will feel they can support and benefit from the work we are going to do.”

The parks team has also been involved with scores of projects this year, some of which are smaller in scale.

Roughly 20 playground improvements were carried in the city over 2021, and two entirely new playgrounds were established – one at Oxley Park, with support from the Stocksbridge Town Fund, and another at Westfield.

Stuart Turner, service manager for the parks and countryside service, said: “All of our buses have come at once this year. We are very busy and we are a very small team.

"A lot of the projects we have been doing are quite small scale, and that can be really helpful because it encourages people back into green space and it encourages community pride.

"It shows that we as the council value those green spaces and so we are trying to invest in them and working with communities and partners to do that.

"Part of why so much is happening now is that there is more data showing savings you can make on health by investing in green spaces. Public health funding has been really valuable especially in targeting quality improvements in green spaces in more deprived areas of the city.

“Green spaces bring classic health and wellbeing benefits through physical activity. But natural spaces like the General Cemetery are also spaces for people to be calm and reflective. The contact with community and contact with nature is really valuable across the city."

The parks team are involved with the University of Sheffield Improving Wellbeing through Urban Nature (IWUN) programme.

The work won’t stop anytime soon, as the team have plenty of projects lined up for 2022, one of which will take place at one of Sheffield’s biggest green spaces.

Plans are underway to develop a series of mountain bike and walking trails along with a kiosk and toilets at Parkwood Springs, a 140 hectare site in north Sheffield. This project has received £1 million in funding from British Cycling and the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine.

The team said accessibility was key, and by ensuring that popular sites are equipped with toilets, they will significantly increase the number of people who visit.