Friends look back on what they achieved during 2018
The Friends of Stonehouse Park group have thanked everyone for their support following another successful year.
The group formed four years ago in a bid to promote Alexander Hamilton Memorial Park, and organise a range of activities and events for the community to enjoy throughout the year.
The bursting 2018 diary has included the annual Easter egg hunt, duck race, elf and snowman trail, and of course, the ever popular Halloween Fright Night.
FOSP’S Karen Kelly said: “What a year it’s been for Friends of Stonehouse Park!
“We kicked off 2018 as usual with the Easter Egg hunt, an event that just gets bigger and better each year. We had fantastic sponsors this year who gratefully purchased over 250 eggs for children in the village.
“This was a really generous gift from Janette Robb, Kyle Financial, The Online Will Service and Avondale Music.
“We then hosted our annual fundraising Duck Race, a great event which provides us the revenue to host all the events throughout the year.
“In the summer we unfortunately had to cancel two events, which in our four years together was the first cancellations – our summer BBQ Bounce and Boogie and Tea in the Park with the Lanarkshire Songwriters Group fell foul of the summer showers, which was a huge disappointment to the committee
“However we did support the local library to hold successful events over the summer holidays; we had the ever popular Gruffalo walk and a visit from Peppa Pig in the woodlands.”
The highlight of the year is no doubt FOSP’S Fright Night, which was attended by over 400 thrill seekers this year.
Karen continued: “Hugely supported again by the community, this event just gets bigger and better each year.
“The success of this event is purely down to the hard work of the committee with new committee members Jamie Orr and Tom Hamilton excelling in ideas and prop building.
“Our last event of the year was the elf and snowman trail. The 12 snowmen remain in place over the winter months to provide a bit of interest in the woodlands. In addition we have been awarded trees from the Woodland Trust which will be planted in the spring.”
Karen concluded: “In 2019 all our events, weather permitting, will return. As usual we will be relying on the goodwill and persuasion of the local businesses to make these bigger and better.
“We have a collaboration with the local charity Supermandy and Wulls Woods in Carluke which should see some additional features in the woods.
“But our main aim is to see some action from our feasibility study that was completed at the end of 2016. We have a magnificent plan of changes to the park that would make it a go-to day out destination.”
FOSP finished the year with the great news that they are one of three causes chosen by the Coop for the year, and will receive donations through the 5p carrier bag charge.