A crown green bowling club that has been at the heart of the community in south Walney for more than a century has been supported to ensure its 13 teams can carry on playing.
The King Alfred Bowling Club has 13 teams playing in all the leagues throughout the Furness area.
The club is sited alongside the King Alfred Hotel which has recently been sold, but its former owners have held on to the bowling green and have given the bowling club a 25-year lease. This gives the club much greater security, but it does mean the club has to fund additional costs.
To reduce those costs the club’s hard-working committee and ground staff are now switching to using items made from modern composite plastic, which uses recycled material and requires no maintenance or painting.
The Furness Locality Board of Westmorland and Furness Council has awarded a grant of £1,100 to the club to replace all the ageing and rotting wooden edging to the green with composite planks and stakes. Club Greenkeeper Martin Barrow said the old edging meant the grass was getting damaged every time it was mown. “The composite should last my lifetime and everybody else's really. It shouldn't move now, so it won't need to be done again.”
The work was done by volunteers from the club. Club Secretary Dave Whitehead has thanked Westmorland & Furness Council for this “generous gesture.”
Club members range from 12 to 82 years of age. In order to attract more young people into the sport, the club has an ongoing relationship with South Walney Primary School. Dave Whitehead added: “if we can coach children and a few of them start to play, then happy days because there aren’t enough kids in the game at the minute! They took to it really well so now as part of their PE, they include crown green bowls.”
The club also hosts a charity competition every year. This year they raised £450 which was divided between Furness MND, Cardiac Risk in the Young and Walney Under-8s football.
Cllr Frank Cassidy, elected member for Walney said: “We are delighted to award this grant to the bowling club. The King Alfred Bowling Club has been a major crown green bowling club in South Walney for over 100 years. It’s grassroots sports clubs like these that are the very life blood of our communities.”
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