3. Knot

A large area of forgotten(?) municipal parkland in Northampton was drawn to our attention. We’ll keep this anonymous as well, for reasons that will become clear.

Owned by the council, and relatively unused due to neglect and vandalism, it neither has the equipment nor the accessibility originally intended.
We were quite sure a group of well-meaning people linked with the land would have plans to rejuvenate it, but were also sure they would have little funding or the vision to do much - they had so much else they wanted to do.

This concerned us: first, to take our project there would perhaps mean treading on their toes quite a bit, and second, would almost certainly involve taking them on as partners in the venture. We'd already spoken to them on other matters, and knew their slow-moving pace of committees and meetings would add yet more unnecessary delays.

Also, pinning ourselves to the vagaries of the council and their committees and meetings and delays and political point scoring, was something we've always been careful to avoid.

Added to that, alongside the park was another group with a nominal public attraction and hopes to expand. Again, we had little hope they would ever actually get around to much of what they talked of, and even then their funding was slim on the ground and often directed elsewhere.

Perhaps more importantly, any of the additional sources of income we would need - for example, a café - would impact on their plans and them on ours.
It appeared a joint venture was out of the question because a) we were both going to need to maximise our share of profits to make it worthwhile, and b) we felt their ambition was lacking when it came to a visitors experience - if we have a cafe, it won't be a cheap shed selling crisps.
This would have been all academic though as another café, seeing an obvious need, opened opposite.  A three-way partnership?  Even worse.


If we ignore the cutting-off of possible revenue, the land itself was awful. It had been farmed once, but was now compacted, rough and would be a nightmare to work with.

Beyond that, there were issues over the past vandalism.  Crime, and what we could do to mitigate it, would be an issue - especially with so many, quite rightly, wanting to have a say in the land.
It was theoretically possible to secure the entire site, but what this would look like from the outside concerned us.  And again, we don't have the leeway to negotiate with others over that sort of thing - it's either there or we aren't.

None of the members or volunteers looked on this as a viable site so, although we made a rough plan to see if it would work, we decided to look elsewhere.


This seems like a good moment to wish all of the various groups well, who are trying to improve the green space in the town.  It's a shame when the owners of land need to be cajoled into action - but perhaps this will change in time.