90 years young bowling green needs your help

Aim

To encourage and support people from all ages and all walks of life to come and enjoy Crown Green Bowling. Friendship and fun is a priority

Who are we?

The Haworth Central Park bowling club was founded in 1932. This year sees our 90th anniversary. We are a friendly group of people who are members of the club, which is affiliated to the British Crown Green Bowling Association (BCGBA). Our main is to encourage other people within the community to come and enjoy a sport that will keep them active and motivated. Club membership consists of a wide and diverse group of people from all walks of life, who have a wide range of abilities and who support and encourage each other.

The bowling club is within a Grade 2 English Heritage, Green Flag park. Only 8% of all parks in the UK are granted this prestigious award.

We meet up for competitive matches twice a week and meet up through the week for practice and social gatherings outside of the competitions.

Our mission statement is “To make Haworth Central Park Bowling Club into a Crown green bowling club that is accessible for all, providing a safe and pleasant environment which ensures that people of all abilities can come and enjoy the game”.

We now need to develop the club following from Covid19, which severely inhibited the normal fund-raising activities of the club over the last two years. The maintenance and utility costs were still there, but with no income to pay them.

Our famous Duerden Cup. Presented to us in 1939 for use in perpetuity; for in house competitions, by Alderman T. Duerden J.P.  the Lord Mayor of Keighley

Above is our pavilion and the Crown Green without the damage, with some of our members in competition with a team from another club.

Below is the green, as viewed from within our beautiful Green Flag park

Community impact

The Club has close links with other local groups. We work on joint projects with local youth groups. Other groups with an interest in the park such as The Friends of Central Park Haworth, and with the local Parkside Social Club. The Bronte Bridge Cafe, supplies us with food and refreshments. The local GP Practice has the bowling club on their Health and Well-being Website that people can access and Social Prescribers refer to this when advising patients how to keep active for both their physical and mental health benefits.

Why we are crowd funding 

We began with the original idea of raising funds to allow us to offer security to the Crown Green and Pavilion which will enable the facilities to be in a good and safe order for people to come and play. We are vulnerable as the green is unprotected from trespass of youths riding electric MotoX bikes, cycles, football games and drug taking. We wanted to ensure the bowling club is able to flourish and offer entertainment to as many people as possible. 

This is the type of damage created by youths power sliding on the green with electric MotoX type bikes causing up to 20 grooves each time, 5 cm wide and 2mtr long on each occasion. Our funds are under great and continuous pressure to maintain the green. A fence will prevent access to cause this deliberate and wanton damage by cyclists. Our funds have been depleted due to Covid19 over the last two years, but all the while the green throughout, had to be maintained without any income.

Our efforts so far have brought a fantastic response from the local community Parish and District Councillors. This crowd funding has put us in the spotlight.

The Parish Councillors have been really impressed with the efforts the bowling club have put in to improving local facilities for all ages, genders and physical abilities, and have decided that they will fund half of the fences and the District council have voted to support us by providing funds to complete the rest, if we add in what we have raised so far through this crowd funding page.

Things we are doing as ongoing projects.

We are giving people  "Have a Go" sessions. Some come and just enjoy the experience, but others get "Hooked on bowling". As shown the photos below.

Below: Left to right

New member learning.                 Putting it into practice.

We have now hosted the first youth group.

A group of 17 mixed gender youths (10 - 17 years of age) attended a session we hosted along with their leaders. They really enjoyed it and have booked to return, ongoing every two weeks. 

The Haworth Village 1940's weekend, is a big, annual local event. 

We opened up to serve refreshments and give people a peaceful resting place away from the crowds. We also gave demonstrations of bowling skills and techniques. People were given opportunity to "Have a Go".

Below is the Green & pavilion (top left) Committee members with a member of a West Yorkshire band who dropped in for a cuppa. (top right)

Second row (L - R). practice target, Drummer "Having a Go", Cracking shot lad, Bomber Harris (not the real one) plus one, US Pilot having a pot shot.

Bottom row (L - R). Chilling out, Part of our crew, More crew in period dress.

We needed to fence off the access onto the Bowling Green from through this woodland area, shown below, by using fences like the one in the bottom images.

These fences are sturdy, but will blend in as the planting matures.

How we are spending the money raised

So, as the pressure to fund a fence has now gone, we are re focusing our project needs on the refurbishment of the pavilion, with regards to Disabled access ramps, Disabled toilet facilities, kitchen improvements. Also provision of Disabled & junior bowls equipment. And to add to the capabilities, we aim to arrange Coaching courses, Safe guarding courses and DBS services. for some of our more experienced members through the British Crown Green Bowling Association which cost over £300 a head. this will give us even more opportunity to open up the facility to more adult/youth/disabled groups. We plan to publicise our club activities through advertising in the local papers, leaflets and social media.

Some of our local attractions include: -

The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway heritage preservation society,

which is run by volunteers. This has featured in two "Railway Children" films

And there's the famous Bronte Parsonage museum.

How you can play your part?

There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.

1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!

2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.

3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!

4. Create a fundraiser of your own. Use the button on our page to get started. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!

This project successfully funded on 14th August 2022