The Welfare Park Project
Seghill Welfare park 1925
How it 
started
In 2000 a petition was circulated around the village, it was signed by over 400 people. The petition included a plan for the refurbishment and development of the park and its facilities. The petition was handed to the full council in February 2001, where it was received and held for action.
Despite numerous attempts to move the plan along, it was not till the summer of 2004 that the council moved to support the petition.
There followed numerous meetings between the interested parties, before the Seaton Valley community assembly decided to award £42,500 towards the cost of providing youth play facilities within the welfare park.
This was followed by a public meeting held at Seghill RFC in the autumn of 2005. From this meeting a project group was formed. To date the group have held four meetings, the outcome of which is that there has been a basic development scheme provisionallly approved by the group.
The urgency to drive the project was vital as the money already allocated had to be spent by March 2007.
The completion date for the whole project is sometime in 2008.
The Park was created by the then mine owner Sir J.F.Laycock, in 1908. Its main function was as a welfare facility for the miners and the village. It included football and rugby pitches, with a bandstand, children's playground, a tea room with changing facilities, a church, a barber shop and other community buildings.
Great news for the project. It received a grant from Barclay's Spaces for Sports, the grant was for £75,000. Along with the Community Assembly grant, this has now enabled construction to start on a state of the art Multi Use Games area, size 30 x 18 metres, plus ancillary works. This facility should be ready for use by the end of August 2007.
The group, through Blyth Valley Council have applied for one of SITA UK annual major grants, these grants total £250,000 each, we will know if we have been shortlisted sometime in June, with the final announcement in September.
Unfortunately we were unsuccessful in our SITA bid.
With responsibility for the Park now handed over to the new County Council approaches are now being made to move the project along.
This will probably be achieved by getting seperate parts of the project completed as the money becomes available.
