A Beautiful, Natural Space at the Heart of the Community
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Creating The Path
We mowed a path around the perimeter to enable the villagers to be able to walk the meadow more easily and enjoy its beauty.
However, we soon understood the enormity of the task of maintaining and cutting this path (which was almost a mile long!) and realised it would be too much for us to do on a regular basis....
What We Did
It was time to set our sights on the next stage of our plan, which was creating a hard-standing path around the meadow perimeter. This would make it accessible for children, wheelchair users and walkers alike, enabling everyone to enjoy a safe community space and wildlife haven.
We got many quotes from local companies, some reaching into the region of £50-100k which seemed extortionate to say the least. We realised that we needed to do some serious fundraising before we could entertain this idea, and so set about forming a proper committee for our social enterprise with a written constitution and CIC bank account. This arduous process took about 6 months (!) of constant calls and emails back and forth to HSBC, but we finally achieved our aim and the official ‘St Eval Community Land Project’ bank account was opened.
How We Achieved It
We started with applying for the ‘Bags of Help’ (blue coin) scheme from Tesco.This generated a great response across two local Tesco stores and we secured a decent sum to help towards our aim. We also applied for a grant from the Denzell Downs Wind Farm Grantscape scheme, and the local hotels (Bedruthan and Scarlet) gave us money as part of their community investment grant. The local community charity shop kindly gave us their annual charity contribution, and local councillor Stephen Rushworth who was in firm support of what we were doing also gave us his annual community chest pot. After a year of hard fundraising efforts, we were looking close to achieving our goal!
Nov. 2019 -The Result
Big thanks to Rich Foord-Joseph, who tirelessly worked on this project for us - we couldn't have done it without him and his team. With his contacts, we were very fortunate that Sandry's donated their machines and volunteered their time free of charge to help us get the path built. We had raised just enough funds to buy the hardcore and relevant materials required, and worked with local volunteers to finally create a beautiful natural-looking hard-standing path around the perimeter of the meadow. It was a joy to behold! The path really came into its own when the Covid pandemic hit. The whole community found solace in the peace of the meadow and more vulnerable members of the village found our ‘one way’ signage and large open space helped them to feel safe whilst enjoying their daily outdoor exercise.