Good People and Pumpkins!

Heritage Open Days was once again worth all the effort that went in to putting it on, thank you to everyone who came. A very special thank you also to the lovely Dan Unwin and the team at Olympus Scaffolding for providing a platform for our visitors to view the plunge pool from above. We had a young assistant this year, who not only sold home-made mud pie spoons, but also explained the pricing structure for bathing at the Spa, and indeed how it may have contributed to the demise of the business. We get so much pleasure from seeing our visitors discovering what a wonderful place it is with such a varied and chequered history. The more we we talk to people, the more we learn about their personal memories of the Spa, which are absolutely fascinating. One of our visitors was a University of Sheffield PhD student, who contacted us after the event about a project to create an Oral History Archive for Birley Spa, to record all these wonderful stories for posterity. All being well the project will start in the new year. More details on this soon.

Our Virtual Quiz night on 26th September, organised by Claire, was a great evening of family fun and may be something we do again in the future as we continue to live through the strangest of times.

Next up is Halloween, and we are so excited! Victoria has created a covid safe event, now fully booked, over two nights that will be awfully, terrifyingly, spooktacularly good!

We are also running a 'Decorate a Pumpkin Competition', please see our Facebook Group for details. We are extremely grateful to Village Pumpkins, Morrisons and Asda for very kindly donating the pumpkins. We can't wait to see what our entrants create.





In our last blog post we asked people to complete a short survey about repairs to Birley Spa Pond. Firstly thank you to all who responded, we had over 150 replies. The results were overwhelmingly in favour of the work going ahead and of it being beneficial for the community and wildlife. There were some very insightful and heart warming comments too. This survey will be invaluable as we pursue funding for the repairs.

We have had two zoom meetings with the council and it's fair to say we are at a bit of an impasse. Apologies for not being able to go into detail at the moment, but if this can be resolved favourably you will hear all about it, if it cannot, you will hear all about it, loudly! Time is against us due to the deterioration of the building, but with National Lottery Heritage Fund interested in the future of the Spa, it is still our belief that the best outcome for the building and the community is for it to be a Community Hub for the benefit and wellbeing of all. 

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