t’s full ahead with our project to redevelop the pavilion and make other major improvements at our new second ground at Grafham, thanks to a generous grant of £79,000 from the London Marathon Charitable Trust. With the £43,000 grant from Sport England previously announced and the money raised by the club itself, the project is now fully funded. Our new lease of the ground from Waverley BC has also now been confirmed and all the necessary consents are in place, so work is set to commence in the new year.
The work will be carried out by the same team who built our new pavilion at Blackheath over the winter of 2012/13, with Bryan Mulloy as our main contractor and John Griggs as our project manager. It is scheduled to start in early January and should be complete for the start of the season in late April.
The changes to the pavilion include an extension to the rear to accommodate a new home changing room and various internal structural alternations to create a new larger away changing room, reconfigured toilets and a small umpire’s room. The whole building will be refurbished to a high standard and the new changing rooms will include individual shower cubicles.
At the same time, we will be making various further improvements to the ground, following the work carried out in 2019. This will include enlarging the square on the pavilion side, creating new outfield pitches, drainage work and replacing the existing fencing. We will also be acquiring various further equipment, including mobile nets and an electronic scoreboard.
The redeveloped ground will not only continue to host our men’s 3rd XI and some boys’ matches in 2020, but most importantly will be the new home of our rapidly growing Women & Girls’ Section.
During the summer, all the girls’ squads will be training at Grafham on Friday evenings, where will be replicating on a smaller scale the operation for the boys’ squads at Blackheath, with a full coaching team and a bar and family BBQ each week. The space and new facilities will enable us to expand our girls’ section further this year.
We are planning an opening ceremony for the refurbished pavilion in early May 2020, hopefully involving one of the England women’s team! Further details to follow.