Growing The Community

Make sure your volume is on: "...work out what the park is to people..."

Show transcript

The idea of connecting with the park and the community together is really key to the aims of the park long term. It is actually written into their Master Plan.

I think now there’s going to be this new presence of park management in the park – we’re going to have a visitor services centre, we’re going to have toilets – the way that the community see the park might change. Or rather, there will be more places to work out what the park is to people, and there going to be a dialogue, and a focus on community engagement which is I think really important to this park because it on the doorstep of so many people’s homes, it’s easily accessible, it’s free (as it should always be) and so many people – so many local people – invest time and memories into this park.

The way that the layering of memory-making in the park has happened - we can see it in the way local people talk about the park, and especially around things like the loss of Leigh Park mansion house, that coming down in the 1959. People still are quite fascinated with that history.

But then there’s also other memories such as the Sixpenny Six – which is a fascinating story of how six people, who were a motley crew of councillors, a Justice of the Peace, Betty Bell and her husband Tony, protested against the charging of entry fees to the park, which was sixpence for adults and threepence for children. And that protest caught the public imagination in a way that was unprecedented and actually ended up being headline news.

And although people don’t necessarily talk about it as much these days there is always a sense that, “This is our park, because we made a claim for it, and we won that claim. And there is no charge for the park.” And I think that out of all the Hampshire country parks, Staunton Country Park is a community park, and that’s what makes it distinct.