‘It’s a little oasis!’
Volunteer tells of charity allotment after TV transformation aired
VOLUNTEERS have revealed the inspiration behind a Potteries project which saw Nick Knowles and his DIY SOS team come in to make the vision a reality.
Last night’s episode showcased the work done in Fegg Hayes which saw scores of local tradespeople give up their time to pitch in.
Nick, his team and the volunteers worked tirelessly over two weeks earlier this year to transform the plot on Oxford Road into something the whole community could benefit from.
The call came from local charity the Sylvester Community Trust.
Now chairwoman Sue Akkurt has spoken of the group’s dream of creating somewhere for youngsters to learn about where food comes from – and also a space to help tackle loneliness in the area.
Sue, of Fegg Hayes, who is also chairwoman of the local residents’ association, says the idea came to her after her grandson didn’t know where chips came from.
Sue, who works part-time in a family business with husband Gino, said: “This idea came to me about six years ago. I picked my grandson up and said ‘what do you want for your tea?,’ he asked for chips. So I went into the kitchen, started peeling potatoes, and he came in and said ‘I don’t want potatoes, I want chips’.
“I said, ‘where do you think chips come from?’, he said, ‘from the freezer nana’. I’d discussed the idea with the residents’ association after talking about why children don’t know that potatoes made chips.
“So out of that, the project was born. We had to become a charity - it’s a long process. It’s been a long, long slog before we got here last year.”
The charity is named after Walter Sylvester – an inventor who designed a device to safely remove pit props in mines.
Walter was born in Newbold, Derbyshire, but his family later moved to Fegg Hayes and he became a clerk at Chatterley Whitfield Colliery.
Sue, below, said: “His invention saved thousands of lives. We wanted to name it after someone who did something really good. Embracing our history as well as our future, it’s part of our ethos.
“The allotment is aimed at the young, the old, and everyone in the community. You can come into the garden, build the planters, grow the seeds, grow the food and then we share the harvest.
“The old ones can learn from the young ones, and the young ones can learn from old ones. If you can’t dig but you know how to grow, come down, and if you can dig, come along too.”
Sue says before Nick and the team arrived it was just a wasted area ‘full of rubbish’. She has been stunned by the results. She said: “They’ve given us a beautiful place to start. Now, it’s the community who will carry on the building.
“I pull in, in the morning, I look at it and say ‘wow, this is ours’. It’s a little oasis.”
Sue says the area is usually open from around 10am until 5pm, every day, apart from Sunday. She said: “At the moment, it’s run by eight people. Eight of us who have put our lives on hold for this. I am humbled every day I walk through the gate for what the volunteers did for us.”
The volunteer team, made up of interior designer Sian Astley, builder Julian Perryman, plasterer Chris Frediani, electrician Billy Byrne and project manager, Mark Millar, as well as local volunteers, battled three storms to get the weekand-a-half work done, which they had completed by Friday, February 25. ■ The show is on BBC iplayer.