Twickenham residents are urging the community to help them clear the last hurdle in their 10-year fight to build a new pavilion in their local park. Charity Moormead Community and Sports Pavilion has crowdfunded more than £20,000 in just two weeks to put towards replacing the derelict, boarded-up pavilion at Moormead Park with new facilities, including toilets and a café.
If they can hit their initial £35,000 target they believe it will show other organisations with the ability to grant them the remaining cash they need, that the community is behind the project. The original pavilion has been condemned, and was already unusable except for storing sports equipment for many years, while the park does not have any toilets or a café. Trustees of the charity told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) they want to turn the new pavilion into the ‘heart of the community’, with facilities to make the park accessible, tackle loneliness and help residents become more active.
Trustee Gariesh Sharma, 49, kickstarted the project to replace the original pavilion in 2015 after seeing residents feeling ‘helpless’ about the disrepair it had fallen into. “I thought actually I’m not going to stand on the sidelines,” he told the LDRS. “I’m going to roll up my sleeves and I’m going to be that change.”
More residents joined the project, Mr Sharma said, and designed the new pavilion with toilets, a community space, a café, storage and an ice cream kiosk, along with a ‘meadow’ roof and solar panels. The charity submitted the plans in 2020 and they were approved by Richmond Council in 2022.
The charity must apply for grants to build the pavilion and has already secured £150,000 from the council. It is now crowdfunding to show the strength of support from the community to help it unlock grants from bigger charities. The crowdfunder it launched in June racked up more than £20,000 in donations in just two weeks, and remains open for donations until July 14.
Excited residents have thrown their support behind the project on the Crowdfunder page. Joanna Gregory said her family have enjoyed the park for more than 50 years, writing: “We are all looking forward to the renaissance of the pavilion. It is wonderful to see how it has united the community and how so many dedicated people have given their free time to provide sporting opportunities to young boys and girls in and around this area.”
Dee Parker added: “Having a new pavilion at Moormead will make such a difference to the local community. My children love playing in the park and attending sports programmes at Moormead – to have somewhere with toilets and facilities will be brilliant.”
The charity said the new pavilion will allow more sports clubs to use the park, as some are not able to currently due to the lack of toilets, while hosting indoor activities and special community events. Trustee Vanessa James, 49, said providing toilets will allow some people to visit the park for the first time and others to stay longer.
She told the LDRS: “We have lots of green spaces but some are actually quite inaccessible… so here is a brilliant, flat, accessible space but yet it isn’t because you have nowhere to just rest, have a drink, use the bathroom facility, so I think that’s why we’re really passionate because it doesn’t allow everybody.”
Ms James stressed the importance of bringing residents together at the new pavilion, while providing a safe space for teenagers to hang out. She said: “People are working from home more… we’ve got a high ageing population, people don’t want to leave this area, it’s a brilliant place to retire, but suddenly they find themselves widowed or their children have moved to other places, so we have a lot of loneliness and isolation and a lot of mental health issues – actually being able to create a hub here will be brilliant.”
You can find Moormead Community and Sports Pavilion’s Crowdfunder page here.
Photos: Trustees Vanessa James, 49, and Gariesh Sharma, 49, at Moormead Park
The boarded-up original pavilion at Moormead Park, Twickenham. Credits: Charlotte Lillywhite/LDRS
