Tag: Bowling

#365daysofbiking Garden ruin


October 19th – Originally featuring tennis courts, gardens and bowling greens, the original, once beautiful Oak Park has been pretty much abandoned and allowed to decay in recent years.

This is a crime, and a civic insult to the miners and citizens of Walsall Wood to whom this place was a gift.

Only the bowling club, with a well kept, securely fenced green still get the benefit of this sad, lost place.

I cannot countenance a world where there simply isn’t the money allowed to look after our civic amenities like this.

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June 22nd – There’s dereliction of a different kind not far away from the land in the last post. Oak Park – the original one, consisting of bowling greens, ferris courts and gardens was originally for the amenity of the local mining community and held in trust. Now, it sits gently decaying like some lost garden ruin next to the 70s leisure centre that bears it’s name. 

Left to rot by a council that no longer cares for it, it’s a sad site that I find tragic and upsetting, not least the overgrown remnants of the BMX track out back, added in the 80s. This was once a grit track, and very popular.

Dereliction of land and dereliction of duty.

August 23rd – Those who think I’m being negative about the sculptures in The Wood should think about this. This miners trust, a true social relic of the coal era hereabouts created this, the original Oak Park for the village and community. When I was a kid, there were ground staff on site in a depot behind the then recently built recreation centre, and the old park was pleasant and well maintained. Paid for initially, and now held in trust by those who worked away from the fresh air and light, it had flowerbeds, paths, well-tended lawns, a bowling green and tennis courts. Slowly, it has been allowed to decay. The tennis courts lie locked out of use, and are slowly being reclaimed by nature, the paths and flowerbeds overgrown and lost. The neatly manicured lawns are now hastily mown scrub. The only thing to survive is a bowling green, operated by a club, a true social asset. 
The miners left this for us, because they understood the value of light and air. We let it rot, and instead erect rusty metal – of the kind they were all too ready to escape from – in their memory, while our next generation grow more and more obese.
There’s something very wrong in all this.