Gill's park dream

If you have a baby, you need a park to take your pram. When Gill Roles moved to Heathfield from London 24 years ago she was shocked to find there was nothing to fit that bill in the town.

She couldn't believe it and immediately started looking around to find a place which would make a park. Eventually she spotted the ideal site, an old railway cutting, and set about trying to secure it for the town.

Now her dream has come true in the form of the Heathfield and Waldron Millennium Green which is immediately behind the Co-op car park. All these years later here is a park where mums can push their babies and which many other townspeople and visitors can enjoy too.

Agreement

After Mrs Roles found the railway cutting she arranged a meeting with British Rail. And she came away with an agreement that they would give the land to the parish council ... but there was still a long way to go to secure the park.

'I had no idea of how much these things cost to do,' said Mrs Roles. The parish council's instant response was that they couldn't afford to do the necessary work.

So Mrs Roles decided she must become a parish councillor to press on with her plan. She was chair of the recreation grounds and properties committee when the opportunity she had been waiting for arrived.

The Millennium Commission and Countryside Agency embarked on a project to create greens throughout the country as a permanent celebration of the new millennium and lottery money was to be made available in grants.

Three years ago the Heathfield project started in earnest. The main task was to raise 83,000. Half of that was promised by the Countryside Agency but a Millennium Green Trust was set up to raise the rest of the money and organise the work.

Major donations came from the parish council, East Sussex County Council and the Co-op and smaller contributions came from Wealden District Council and many local businesses and private citizens.

'Underpinning all this,' says a leaflet about the green 'have been the efforts of The Friends of the Green and many other volunteers, including the trustees, who have made contributions by giving their time and labour.'

Mrs Roles said: 'A lot of councillors were none too sure whether we could raise the money but I was, so I said ''Let's go for it and see where we get to'' and here we are, finished. We are waiting for a few picnic tables to to in but to all intents and purposes the work is done. It is a dream come true.'