Grindleford

St Helen’s Church will be holding their Harvest Festival at 10 a.m. on Sunday 6th October. All ages welcome. Gifts will go to the Chesterfield Food Bank.

Great news. The project to re-roof the church and fit solar panels has now all the required permissions in place and orders have been placed for these works to start.

It is anticipated that works will commence in July 2024, the solar panels will start to be fitted in August 2024 – and all being well, the works will be completed by October 2024.

There clearly will be some disruption throughout this time but the contractors will seek to minimise this and ensure continued (if on occasion, limited) access to the church and the community shop.

St Helen’s PCC  29 May 2024

No Thanks to BT

Last year we were told that Plusnet were closing their business accounts and that the shop should transfer to BT.  This was duely ordered in October.  Nine months later, after 70 emails, hours on the phone, five failed connection dates, the shop was still not connected. In the meantime Plusnet switched off the broadband on 24th May.  Fortunately it was possible to run a temporary cable across the churchyard from next door.

Finally it was decided in the middle of August to give up on BT and place an order with SKY.  No problem they said, we have a dedicated UK manager who will see it through to completion.  Two weeks later an engineer turned up at 8.15 and everything was done by 8.45.  The shop and the church now have faster broadband and phone for £10 less a month than BT.

We are very pleased to announce the Grindleford Goat Charity is now open for bids. The latest edition of The Grindleford News will carry an article explaining who we are, what we are about and how we hope to benefit residents of the Parish of Grindleford, including community groups that work and play within our environs. Have a look at our Goat webpage for full details: www.grindlefordgoat.co.uk

The latest edition of the Grindleford News is online: Grindleford News March 2023

It should be delivered to your door in the next few days.

I have been asked to look after the village website. The first thing that struck me was that it had a lot of out of date information on it. The second is that things have changed since the website was first set up. News is now more likely to be shared on Facebook or Whatsapp and many of the village organisations now have their own websites. I see the website as being a point of reference for people wanting to find out about the village. As such, it is important that the information is reliable and up to date and I am in the process of going through the content to bring it up to date.

In addition to this, I am aiming to simplify the design and introduce a range of new security features. One of these is to replace visible email addresses with links to code that will call your email program.

If you have up to date information that you would like adding or news, please email us:

A new management team has taken over at the community shop. Kaori Carter and Fiona Outram are now managing the shop on a job share basis. They took over from Peter Ragdale who has managed the shop with great success for the two and a half years. Peter is continuing to volunteer at the shop and giving support to the new team.

Grindleford Playing Field Association have sited a new Public Access Defibrillator at the Pavilion funded jointly by the Association and the Parish Council. It has been fitted adjacent to the Pavilion main entrance facing the main road. A PIR light has also been fitted to illuminate the area to enable access at night. 

The defibrillator has been registered with the Circuit – the national defibrillator network. We are now waiting for East Midland Ambulance Service to provide a training session in the Pavilion to demonstrate how the defibrillator works in an emergency. The session will be open to all those interested. Look out for details on the village website and Facebook page. 

The defibrillator is fully automatic with audible and visible real time instructions at each critical stage of the process. Clear graphical instructions show where to place the pads. The unit recognises when a shock is needed and delivers what is required without manual input. The defibrillator is ready to use.

If you need to use the defibrillator call 999 who will give you the key code to access the box. Then follow the instructions from the defibrillator. The defibrillator must be returned to the box at the Pavilion after use as we need to ensure there is a defibrillator in the box when needed.

Well, what a lovely weekend , we planted 800 new trees in Grindleford over four days!Twenty-two villagers came along to help, our biggest turnout yet. Thanks.Many thanks to the core GTPG Team 🌳We also had people coming along interested in what we were doing and all were enthusiastic.

As you know, we have been trying to create some more wildlife corridors in the village by planting mixed native trees as hedging.Over the weekend we extended the hedging, again mixed natives ( oak, beech, silver birch, hazel, hawthorn and alder) along the fence from the fishermen’s hut towards the cricket field boundary fence. We also planted some interesting plots behind the Multi Use Games Area (MUGA). A stand of silver birch ; an arc of spindleberry ( please look it up, very interesting!); two areas of aspen surrounded by goat willow then surrounded by hazel; a low hedge of hawthorn, dog rose, alder and hazel around a wet ditch; and a secret enclosed space encircled by rowan and hazel where we plan to site some benches for you all to come and sit and listen to the birds and soak up the nature. We are going to see what wild flowers emerge in the open areas and we will cut some paths through and around these areas so that everyone can enjoy them. We also plan to enhance the wet ditch area in the autumn to encourage insects, dragonflies, frogs, toads, newts and maybe water voles.I think it will be great in just a few years’ time; but already it is a lovely spot with lots of birdsong.

We will continue to maintain the area in collaboration with the Playing Fields Committee to whom we are very grateful for their permission and encouragement to undertake this project.Many thanks to The Conservation Volunteers who gave us really excellent trees to plant along with guards and canes.Please come and have a look!
Take carePaul

Grindleford Tree Planting Group: our aim is to plant trees to enhance our local habitats; to provide more wildlife corridors in the village that in turn attracts insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals; to make an effort to address climate change at a local level; perhaps to help prevent flooding; and to bring people together to learn about and care for our environment and to have a good time!