Peter Evans from the Friends of Stirchley Park

Peter Evans from the Friends of Stirchley Park
Peter Evans from the Friends of Stirchley Park

Peter Evans is the chairman of the Friends of Stirchley Park, a group of volunteers working to promote and improve Stirchley Park for the community.

The group has made a number of improvements over the last 12 months, including the planting of five new saplings, new benches and a noticeboard. Community tidy-ups have been held and a piece of graffiti art, known as The Sleeping Child, was also produced with Place Prospectors. Plans are in place to create more.

The back of Stirchley Baths from the park
The back of Stirchley Baths from the park

Peter says the park has always been “the hidden park”. He’d been living in Stirchley for a couple of years before he glimpsed it from the Gyratory – and then assumed it was private land. Thanks to the Friends’ efforts, though, more and more people are using the green space to walk their dogs or just to relax. A group of dog walkers meet in the park every day at 5pm!

The Sleeping Child
The Sleeping Child

The park sits just behind Stirchley Baths and there’s a pathway to it between the Co-op and Farm Foods buildings. The redevelopment of the Baths into a community hub will bring changes, however, with a green area immediately behind the Baths set to become a car park for visitors. There will also be a children’s play area and pathways around to the hub. Peter – although disappointed at the loss of some green space – hopes the community hub will further open up access to Stirchley Park and help to bin the ‘hidden park’ tag forever.

listen to ‘Peter Evans, chair of the Friends of Stirchley Park’ on Audioboo

You can follow Stirchley Park on Twitter HERE

Peter Evans and fellow Friends of Stirchley Park member Brian Sheridan
Peter Evans and fellow Friends of Stirchley Park member Brian Sheridan

Thoughts from the show of hands for Stirchley Baths

Hands Up

Here are three lovely interviews with some of the people who came out to support the community arts project at Stirchley Baths recently.

Almost 300 hands were displayed around the Baths, each with a personal message of support for the project or an idea of how the heritage of the building can be shared with local people. You can see more on the event HERE.

All of the hands will be displayed in Stirchley Library soon, by the way, so you can have a look at the kind of things people were saying.

Thanks to Matthew Green for these interviews…

listen to ‘What Katie wants from #StirchleyBaths’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Local businesswoman Val tells what the redevelopment of #StirchleyBaths will mean for her’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Hear what local resident @philbanting wants from the redeveloped #StirchleyBaths’ on Audioboo

Place Prospectors’ artworks for Stirchley Baths

Emma and Jayne from Place Prospectors
Emma and Jayne from Place Prospectors

It was great to meet Emma Larkinson and Jayne Murray from Place Prospectors to hear all about a piece of artwork they’ve been commissioned to produce as part of the project to bring Stirchley Baths back into use as a community hub.

In fact, Emma and Jayne (who organised the Stirchley Prospects and Love Stirchley More events) will be producing two pieces of artwork.

The first will be a piece of participatory art that will be started in June when the funding bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) is submitted. It will be called (somewhat fittingly at this critical stage in the project) ‘Sink or Swim’ and will require lots of community participation, so we’ll keep you updated on the details for this so you can get involved.

The second piece of artwork will be housed inside the community hub and Emma and Jayne have a number of ideas that they’re working up. They talk about them in detail in the interview but some ideas include:

  • Signs made of glitterboard (a material that moves and ripples gently, giving an appearance of water) to direct people from the rear of the Baths to the entrance at the front
  • There is space in the entrance lobby for a welcome mat. In fact, an indentation in the floor shows clearly where the original would have been. Emma and Jayne are thinking of making a new welcome mat

A large golden coloured and elaborate ceremonial key - used for opening the stirchley baths in 1911.

    • Remember the ceremonial key that was used to open the Baths in 1911? A new one could be made to mark the re-opening of the building as a community hub
    • Emma and Jayne are looking to utilise the bore hole in the Baths. When it opened, the original plan was to well for water but, unfortunately, a source was never found
listen to ‘Place Prospectors' Emma and Jayne on their artwork for Stirchley Baths’ on Audioboo

What do you think of Emma and Jayne’s ideas? You can get involved and pass on your thoughts and ideas by mailing stirchleybaths@gmail.com or connecting with us on Twitter and Facebook

Some of the ideas come from the history of the site long before the Baths were built. Research by Emma and Jayne has uncovered some fascinating details of what took place on the site, including:

1830: The Beer House Act led to the opening of many beer houses in an attempt to minimise the drinking of gin! The Black Horse beerhouse and stables opened on the site of Stirchkey Baths in this year

In the 1890s a wonderfully named Blood Tub Theatre was on the site, a tent theatre to present old melodramas

Inside Stirchley Baths April 2013

Last week I was given privileged access into the baths (I did have to plead a bit!) so I could really get a sense of the physical space within the building to help us shape our interpretative proposal for the Heritage Lottery Fund Activity plan. Architect Mark Sloane patiently answered my many questions about what historic features were being kept, restored, reused and accessible for the public – what bits people would actually be able to see.

I came away feeling decidedly grubby, but confident that the essence of the building will be maintained through the restoration – that Stirchley Baths will always be just that – but re-purposed.

I couldn’t resist making another movie – this time with some sound effects! For those of you never to have made it to an open day – here is what it looks like inside – not just in  the pool, but also in the slipper baths, Mikvah, sauna, changing room, corridors, front entrance and in the original ticket kiosk. Very sad to see what has become of the building – but so important to show how vital this Heritage Lottery grant is!

I’ll post some photos up at a later date.

Jenny learned to swim at Stirchley Baths after nearly drowning in Spain

Jenny Barnwell

Jenny Barnwell was taken to Stirchley Baths as a five-year-old by her parents as soon as they arrived back in Britain from a holiday in Spain.

Jenny had been paddling in the Costa del Sol sea when she was sucked into the ocean by a wave. Luckily, she was “spat back out again” but the terrifying experience made her parents enrol her for swimming lessons.

Jenny wrote this on her hand to support the Stirchley Baths community hub project: “I learned to swim here in 1960 after a close shave – I nearly drowned in the sea at Costa del Sol.”

listen to ‘Jenny’s learn-to-swim challenge after Costa Del Sol incident!’ on Audioboo