Bolehills Park: Volunteers reveal plans to open up pavilion at popular Sheffield park site

But now there are hope that the pavilion in Bolehills Park, Crookes, could finally open up to the public, for families to use during their daytime trips to the popular green space.

The original pavilion at Bolehills was destroyed in an arson attack in 2017 - and five years later a new facility was opened, just behind the bowling greens at the well known park.

The new pavilion includes an activity space, toilets and a kitchen, but is not usually open during the day.

Now, work has started to re-launch a Friends of Bolehills Park group, and there is an ambition among those who have signed up to open up the pavilion during the daytime to provide drinks and snacks from the kitchen, and also toilet facilities for families using the park.

Volunteers outlined their plans to The Star at the revamped organisation's first Community Day, which saw the pavilion open its doors, and also saw volunteers join Sheffield Council parks department staff in work to clear paths.

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Katie Monach, one of the group of volunteers which has re-launched Friends of Bolehills, said: “What we’re trying to do is open it up more regularly, try to get people to see that they can hire it, for all sorts of events.

“There are more and more community groups using it already, but Friends of the Bolehills, ideally we’d like to have it open more regularly, maybe at weekend mornings to offer coffees, teas, biscuits, cakes, that kind of thing. But we can only do it if there are enough members of the group, so we would like to have more people getting involved.”

Parliamentary candidate Olivia Blake was among those visiting the event. She said she thought it would be great to see the facility used more.

Volunteers, and local councillor Minesh Parekh, were also getting involved in some of the physical maintenance work at the park, cutting back vegetation on a path through the park leading down towards its BMX track.

Officials say work of that sort is now needed to be done manually, because Sheffield’s parks department has stopped using glyphosate weed killer.

Also among those taking part were the park’s bowling club, who use the pavilion as a base, and who recently held an open day to encourage people to try bowling.

The club is thought to have been at the park for 90 years.

But they were unable to play matches in the park for several years after the original, wooden pavilion was burned down in 2017.

The club, along with Sheffield Council, put in a funding bid with Sports UK which paid for the new building.

To get involved with Friends of Bolehills Park, email [email protected]