News - Pressure is mounting for clean-up of dam and park (Sheffield)

VOLUNTEERS are pressing for political support to spruce up one of the most popular parts of the Porter Valley in Sheffield.

Initial plans centre on desilting Forge Dam and repairing the dam walls, before improving the area around the cafe and improving the playground.

The project is being driven by the Friends of the Porter Valley, who are already steering the reopening of the Shepherd Wheel after a £1m fundraising campaign.

Increasingly, their attention is turning to Forge Dam. “About half a million people a year are going through the park and, according to our surveys, between a fifth and a quarter are from outside the immediate area,” said Ann le Sage, who chairs the Friends.

“It’s a park for Sheffield and at present it’s dreadful.”

Volunteers have spent hundreds of hours clearing scrub and saplings from surrounding woodland, but are looking for council support for the first part of a proposed programme to desilt the dam and to remove tree roots and strengthen the walls. The estimated cost is £360,000.

Ann said she understood the financial pressures on the council, but with the offer of volunteer help and the credibility of the Friends proven at Shepherd Wheel, she had high hopes.

Later it would be a case of securing funds, probably around £1m, from the likes of the Heritage Lottery Fund to carry out the rest of the programme.

Ann added: “There is a lot of thinking to do once we get answers from the council. With goodwill and hard work, we should be able to make it.”

A masterplan, backed by the Friends and the council’s south west community assembly, was drawn up after a public consultation exercise.

The dam was cleaned about 20 years ago and long before that it was used for boating. “When we did the consultation, I lost count of the number of people who said they had been on a boat on the dam. We are not planning to go down that route, although we are not ruling it out.”

Ambitions include trying to prevent further desilting of the dam by working with landowners upstream, and the possibility of a small hydro power scheme, for education purposes as well for generating electricity for the cafe.

The Friends are aiming to have Shepherd Wheel back in action as a visitor attraction this year after raising £500,000 themselves and with £500,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

It will be run by Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust, which already operates Kelham Island Industrial Museum and Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet.

From: http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/pressure_is_mounting_for_clean_up_of_dam_and_park_1_4135845

Wheel of history is turning once again (Sheffield)

SHEPHERD Wheel in the Porter Valley has rolled again for the first time in 16 years.

A reminder of Sheffield’s industrial history dating back to the 1600s, it has been repaired and given a test run as a community campaign to see it back in action for the benefit of schools and other visitors nears its end.

The Friends of the Porter Valley, who have been working on the project with the council, are aiming to see the wheel and its two grinding workshops open to the public again early next year.

The building at the bottom of Bingham Park will be run by Sheffield Industrial Museums Trust, which already operates Kelham Island Museum and Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet.

Experts and volunteers will explain the history and how knives, scythes and scissors were made next to the River Porter. The building still contains complete sets of machinery for cutlery production.

Now that repairs have been carried out to the wheel and machinery and the dam has been rebuilt, an education centre and toilets are next to be built.

Teams from SIMT, Friends of the Porter Valley, the council and York Archaeology Trust are designing education and visitor programmes and there will be a celebratory opening. Before then, the Friends will hold a volunteer clean-up day clearing the scrub along the dam path.

“I am afraid the wheel is not going to turn again for several weeks because the reconstruction work has turned the mill into something of a building site again,” said Ann le Sage, who chairs the Friends. “But it will certainly turn again in 2012.”

Shepherd Wheel is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and the city’s only remaining example of the early small-scale industry that was prevalent in the 1600s and 1700s.

It ceased commercial operation in the 1930s. A restoration project in the 1960s allowed it to open to the public at weekends but eventually the council ran out of money and the condition of the whole complex began to deteriorate.

Restoration is on the back of £500,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, with another £500,000 being raised by the Friends through fundraising and grants.

“We are very grateful to the people who have given us money,” said Ann. “There are people who have admired this place for years, but have not seen it function for at least 20 years. It is such a neat collection of small workshops and so evocative of a past age.

“It is so intimate you can imagine the grinders working here and dying in miserable circumstances at an early age. It’s a history that is fascinating for children.”

From: http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/wheel_of_history_is_turning_once_again_1_3755225

News - Attempt to hammer out a new future for Forge Dam (Sheffield)

AT one time there was so much water that visitors could take to rowing boats. These days much of Forge Dam, one of the most popular spots in Sheffield’s Porter Valley, is silted up and overgrown with trees.

Now the future of the dam – and the area around it – is under the microscope, with local people, and the many others who use the valley, being asked for their views.

“This is a park for whole of Sheffield, not just for S10,” said Ann Le Sage, who chairs the Friends of the Porter Valley, which chipped in £1,000 towards the cost of a consultants’ report.

Most of the money – £20,000 – has come from the council’s South West Community Assembly and the result is a raft of ideas that are now the basis for public consultation.

Some visitors may want to keep the dam as it is, complete with a naturally growing island which attracts wildlife, but for most the initial reaction is to dredge it “to get rid of the filthy sludge so that people can look at clean water sitting on a decent row of benches facing south”, said Ann.

The question is being asked whether some of the trees surrounding the dam, near Fulwood, should be cut down so that the green spaces could be opened up “and people could see a beautiful lake in a green valley, as it used to be, not surrounded by inappropriate trees”.

Consideration is also being given to opening up the area in front of Forge Dam café, using water features to link the playground with the river and creating better disabled access to the dam.

“The proposals are very much based on the ideas visitors put forward before Christmas. Now is the moment to look at some landscape projections and specific texts about possible solutions to the dreadful condition of the dam, the use of the green space for visitors, the long-term design of the playground and some new water features linking visually to the river.

“We know from past participation in the Friends’ organised events that at least 30% of park visitors come from well outside the immediate area so we want this to be a Sheffield-wide consultation. The Forge Dam area is hugely popular and thousands of visitors signed up to the petition in the café last year demanding that there should at last be investment in improvements to this rather run-down Sheffield park.”

The Friends have been working with council parks and countryside officers and the South West Assembly and an options appraisal has been drawn up by Breeze Landscape Architects and Jeremy Benn Associates.

They are being displayed in the café from today (Thursday) until Tuesday. Breeze representatives will be in the café tomorrow (Friday) from noon to 3pm and on Saturday from 10am to 3pm.

The café reopened at the end of last year after an £80,000 repair and refurbishment programme to offer a long-term future to one of the attractions on the Round Walk. Ann added: “The Friends and council have already made some minor improvements, such as sprucing up the playground, doing litter picks and repairing benches, but more radical revitalisation is clearly needed.”

Once a way forward is determined, the emphasis will switch to the cost at a time when the council is cutting back in many areas, including parks and countryside.

But the volunteers are undeterred, prepared to do what they can themselves, and they will be in the café area to repair benches on Sunday morning.

The Friends of the Porter Valley are spearheading the restoration of the Shepherd Wheel at the bottom of Bingham Park as a working museum. They hope the wheel and machinery will be restored and open to the public by the autumn.

From: http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/local/attempt_to_hammer_out_a_new_future_for_forge_dam_1_3126022