Welcome to Friends of Graves Park Heritage website. Join Us if you would like to help us support, improve and protect Graves Park.
Events
Coming Soon: Saturday 26th July and Sunday 3rd August: More David Walks
Join us for the next fundraising event – or just sponsor our intrepid walkers!
Update! David’s May Walks Success!
A grand total of £312.60 was raised by david’s walks on 17th and 18th may – thanks everyone who helped and donated, especially david!
Update! Quiz Night Success!
A grand total of £1173.80 was raised at the quiz night on 2nd may – thanks everyone who helped and donated!
Update! Easter Fayre Success!
A grand total of £871-84 was raised at the Easter Fayre on 12th April – thanks everyone who helped and donated!
Graves Park is a large park in the south of Sheffield, combining a unique historical landscape with a rich environmental and recreational space. It was established by JG Graves in the 1920s and 30s and given by him to the people of Sheffield for them to enjoy forever. Find out more about the history of Graves Park here. Generations have enjoyed this remarkable place.
Friends of Graves Park is a small charity run by volunteers which exists to protect and enhance this unique place for the people of Sheffield now and into the future.
News
New Report!
GRAVES PARK FUNGI REPORT
DECEMBER 2024
FUNGI OF GRAVES PARK
DECEMBER 2024
STEVE CLEMENTS
Rose Garden Cafe Latest:
Rose Garden Cafe Partnership Statement
From Meeting of Friday 28th February 2025
Latest News from the Rose Garden Café Partnership
Today we heard from Charlotte Barrington the Mechanical Engineer from RLB Ltd on the restoration project about the options for the mechanical systems (heat, power, water, solar and drainage) in the cafe and which of the current modern systems are the most environmental sustainable and energy efficient (The current systems are very inefficient and costly.). We also discussed the community fundraising plans for Easter and beyond including craft stalls and a quiz night. We are grateful for £2,000 from the Local Area Committee to enable us to buy some equipment for our community engagement and fundraising work. The Expression of Interest to the National Heritage Lottery Fund has gone in by the deadline of 26th February. We await their decision wither we are able to proceed to a full bid. key points we noted are that:-
• Toilets are at the end of the life cycle
• Lighting, fire and hot water systems are over 20 years old.
• The roof is 100 years old in 2027
• The cafe only uses gas for water and heating
• A VRF (Variable Refrigerant Flow- Air source heat pump) system is being recommended to provide a new form of heating with solar panels on the roof which will lead to a 50% reduction in energy costs. Maintaining the cafe’s good natural ventilation heat retention. We have asked for investigation into battery storage for the power generated by the solar array.
• There will also be an instant boiling water tap (Quooker) in the kitchen.
• All of the costs of this are already included in the current estimate of £2.6m for the restoration project.
This element is £522k for the VRF system External lighting £102k Drainage £45k.
We also discussed the Legacy Statement for the cafe and ideas for the continuing community involvement in the future operation of the cafe. These ideas are still under discussion.
We have requested that the project team try and produce ‘lifecycle costs’ for the cafe. Alan Wood has offered to assist us with this element.
Plans for community fundraising in the park Julie is in talks with ‘Better Points’ in the café.
Where people earn up to 1500 points for a free coffee and donate 50p to the restoration project.
Liz is working with Nathan with the councils T shirt supplier (pro bono) to give us a stick to sell at community events.
The current community fundraising total is £17,000 and the funds from the coffee cup donations in the cafe is £1924.00 Grant process application: the EOI to the NLHF has gone in by the deadline of 26th February.
We await their decision wither we are able to proceed to a full bid. We have asked for a full schedule of materials as soon as it is available to enable us to seek pro bono contributions from suppliers.
The Partnership will be reporting to the Council’s Charity Trustee Sub Committee on Monday 3rd March at 2.00pm in the Town Hall.
- For more details of our progress and future plans go to the Partnerships ‘Have Your Say’ page https://haveyoursay.sheffield.gov.uk/rose-garden-cafe
Just a reminder to everyone that the partnership is made up of representatives from the Save the Rose Garden Café group, Friends of Graves Park and Sheffield City Council.
Please spread the word and let’s get people donating to our fundraiser.
https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/RoseGardenCafeGravesPark?invite=true
or by BACS transfer, confirming with email:
Please pay “Friends of Graves Park”
Bank Details:- Sort Code 30-97-51 A/c No. 03370075
If you have any offers of support, please get in touch. Spread the word!
Finding Lost Norton Park: Digging Deeper for All Project
Summer Events 2025
Although the Digging Deeper Project is now over, you might be interested in the following events in 2025.
GPACC Summer events programme
Update from christine:
Our summer events programme is now underway. It includes a variety of walks covering different wildlife and some local history. We hope that you will be able to join us at one of these. We are still happy for you to send in any wildlife records to my colleague Karon, karon.syeconet@gmail.com to add to our lists which will feed into our Eco-plan for the park.
We have two Butterfly & Bumblebee recording walks coming up led by Christine Handley & Karon Mayor. These walks will be part of the monitoring work, and we will demonstrate the method of recording. The first is on Thursday 12th June, from 1.30 to 3.30pm meeting at the Charles Ashmore car park entrance. We will walk around a circuit covering short grass, flower-rich meadows, and woodland edge / hedgerow habitats recording the numbers and range of species which we see. The second is on Thursday 24th July from 1.30pm, meeting at Charles Ashmore car park. No need to book for either of these.
Ian will be leading a Magical Meadows walk on Thursday 3rd July, 2pm to 4pm, meeting by the Sports Pavilion, Derbyshire Lane entrance. He will be looking at the Spring Park meadows area particularly and how it is developing. Advance booking is preferred (see the link below).
The next 3 monthly bird walks led by Karon Mayor are on Thursday 3rd July, 7th August and 4th September all starting at 10am by the Rose Garden Café. Each is a gentle stroll around the same route, looking for and listening to a variety of birds. The walks have been running for nearly 2 years and on average 30 species are recorded each time.
On Saturday 26th July, 9am to around 11am, we have the Moth Morning ID event taking place in Chantreyland Meadow to view the moths caught in the traps overnight. This event is once again led by Paul Ardron and Jan Turner. Those who attended last year were very impressed by the range and number of moths found. The event may last over 2 hours depending on the number of moths caught. Booking is now open.
We are organising a Bat Walk on Friday 15th August starting at 8pm (finishing around 10pm) from the Norton Park View entrance. This is led by Ian Rotherham and Karon Mayor and needs to be booked.
8th August is the centenary of the official opening for Painted Fabrics Ltd at Little Norton. Christine Handley and other members of the local history/ reminiscences group are organising a walk and visit to the Painted Fabrics site and memorial room on Friday 8th August. More details of this and other centenary events will appear in the next e-mail news. Booking will be essential for this event.
The next regular meeting of the local history/ reminiscence group will be on Tuesday 17th June at the Norton Hotel,11am start. Our focus for this meeting will be on Painted Fabrics Ltd and its centenary. All are welcome to come along and suggestions for future topics are welcome – I just need to know in advance for overall numbers
Please book events via https://bookwhen.com/sybrg#focus=ev-smj4-20250322143000
We hope to see some of you out in the park enjoying some sunny summer weather!
Click here to browse our Heritage Maps and resources.
Digging Deeper for All was an exciting investigation into the history, archaeology amd ecology of Graves Park, made possible by the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It included a variety of community events and opportunities to get directly involved.
Click here to find out more and see what we discovered!
The Rose Garden Cafe
On 18th October 2023, the Charity Subcommittee met at the Town Hall for a special meeting to decide the way forward regarding the Rose Garden Café. The decision was to work in partnership with stakeholders to develop a Strategy for the restoration of the Rose Garden Café building
This appears to be good news and the Friends of Graves Park will be pushing for action as soon as possible.
Find out more detail about what’s happening here.
On 18th September 2023 the Rose Garden Cafe was listed on the South Yorkshire Local Heritage Register. This helps to support the heritage status of the cafe, but doesn’t provide the level of protection that national listing would.
Newsletter
The Winter 2024/25 Newsletter is now available here.
Campaigns
We have ongoing campaigns to protect threatened areas of the park and restore the next section of the former Norton Nurseries site. Find out more by clicking on the links below.
Now that Chantreyland Meadow and the Arboretum part 1 are well established in Graves Park, the Friends of Graves Park are ready to start the restoration to parkland of the next section of the former Norton Nurseries site. To donate please click on the link below.
https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/GravesParkArboretum?invite=true
How you can help:
Become a member for just £3 a year!
Donate through our Just Giving account.
Support us when you shop online
Sign up to the fund-raising supports below. This is an easy way to help us whenever you shop online and it supports us with a steady income. Please read the details below and use the links to get you started.
There are over 4,000 shops and sites on board ready to make a donation – including eBay, Argos, John Lewis, ASOS, Booking.com and M&S – and it won’t cost you a penny extra to help us raise funds.
All you need to do is:
- Go to https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/fogravespark/?utm_campaign=raise-more and join for free.
- Every time you shop online, go to easyfundraising first to find the site you want and start shopping.
- After you’ve checked out, the retailer will make a donation to Friends of Graves Park at no extra cost to you whatsoever!
There are no catches or hidden charges and Friends of Graves Park will be really grateful for your donations.
Thank you for your support.
