SCULPTURE WALK - MORE INFO
A-Wassailing We Go!
A merry crowd joined us in the Apple Bee Community Orchard one morning in early March to waken the trees from their winter dormancy and encourage a good harvest this year.
Derived from the old English ‘Waes hael’, a greeting meaning ‘good health’, wassailing is a long-standing tradition that typically involves dancing, singing and drinking. For more than 1,000 years it has been an English folk custom, particularly in cider-producing regions, to ward off evil spirits, bless the trees and encourage them to bear fruit.
Dressed in colourful vintage jackets and hats we walked round the trees, banging pots, drums and tambourines and singing wassailing songs. We were accompanied by musicians playing a whistle and strumming the guitar. The aim was to scare off any evil spirits that might harm the crop. A ceremonial king and queen were chosen to lead the toast. Little cups of birdseed were scattered among the trees to attract robins. These birds help to naturally control pests and are traditionally the guardians of orchards. Apple juice was handed out to pour on the roots to feed the trees. We all then gave a big wassail chant to wake them from their winter state, followed by three cheers of 'hip, hip, hooray!' and more raucous banging of instruments.
We also had a 'mindfulness moment' of stopping, enjoying the sun and listening to the many birds which were singing on what was a beautiful sunny spring morning.
As the morning ended everyone was encouraged to visit the Park in the coming weeks to see the trees coming into blossom.
The Great British Spring Clean - April 2025
We all have a role to play in making Gateshead cleaner, greener and more welcoming.
Find out what Friends of Saltwell Park have been up to over the Great British Spring Clean to highlight the amazing work environmental services and all local community groups do here in Gateshead.
CLICK HERE to discover more about The Great British Spring Clean with Gateshead Council 2025.
Update from Gateshead Council.
February 2025.
New Bowling Green Pavilion
Following the consultation held in Saltwell Towers last November, the proposed design for the new pavilion was passed and has now progressed to the planning stage. The design was warmly received by the Friends of Saltwell Park and other Park users, whose ideas and requests were considered and incorporated into the exterior and interior layout. The pavilion will act as a hub for volunteers, giving them a location to operate from and a place where they can store equipment and enjoy refreshments after tasks. We will update you on progress in future issues of this newsletter.
Repainting Park Railings
Last year we began repainting the outer perimeter railings. This is a long process, as the old paint needs to be stripped off first, but the new paint has made a big difference on the now completed East Park Road section and looks smarter and more welcoming. We will continue with repainting other parts of the perimeter railings in spring when the weather gets warmer.
Please Clean up After your Dog!
The council is taking action against the increase in dog fouling in the Park. Dog Warden patrols are now more frequent and additional signs have been erected to warn visitors that it is their responsibility to pick up after their dog. We have also placed a dog waste bag dispenser next to Saltwell Towers in case visitors have forgotten to bring their own bags.
Please help us keep the Park clean, safe and pleasant for all visitors!
Kevin Hills
Gateshead Council
Time for some refreshments -
27th January 2025
After their January break, Prism Coffee has now reopened in the Almond Pavilion, Saltwell Park, Gateshead.
Stop off here for some welcome refreshments during your walk around the park, or meet up with friends for a catch up!
Planting new life in the park
Last autumn two eco groups from Brighton Avenue Primary School planted daffodil bulbs, crocus corms, herbs and flowering plants in the raised beds of our orchard. The children learned how to dig the right sized holes and plant them in the soil without disturbing the roots. They will be returning to see how the bulbs and corms have sprouted and how the plants have fared over the winter period.
We would like to thank Scotswood Garden in Benwell for their kind donation of plants that enabled more children to take part.
A young hedgehog foraging in the Orchard was spotted by the children during the October planting session. It was too small to survive the coming winter so the Friends of Saltwell Park rescued it and took it to a local rescue centre where it will be fed and sheltered over the winter and released in a safe place when the weather is warmer.
Welcome to 2025
Happy New Year from us all
The committee and volunteers at Friends of Saltwell Park have been busy over the holiday season, putting together plans for our friendly events and informative walks for 2025.
We have now released the dates for our very popular seasonal bird walks, lead by Michael, these walks discover different types of birds throughout the year.
Book now and secure your place on these walks, space is limited!
We have also added to our events page, a spring event for 2025. We will be wassailing in the Apple Bee Community Orchard. This sounds like a fun filled morning for all to come and enjoy.
We also have plans being finalised for some new informative walks within Saltwell Park. Keep checking our events and walks page for details as more are released.
We look forward to welcoming you to our events and walks throughout 2025.
Christmas carols and cheer - December 2024
Well over 100 people gathered at a very festive looking bandstand in Saltwell Park on the Sunday before Christmas to enjoy a carols concert organised by local churches.
Hot spiced apple juice greeted visitors on arrival and warmed us up against the cold wind. The music was provided mostly by children, accompanied on the keyboard, clarinet, trumpet and cello.
Everyone joined in and a spectacular sunset made a beautiful end to the proceedings as we made our way back home.
Update from Gateshead Council.
October 2024.
The weather is getting colder but the Park continues to look stunning in its autumn colours. We hope you have noticed the newly painted aviaries - black with silver finials. The tarpaulins covering the roofs have also been renewed and sign written. Over at the tennis courts work has continued at the new learn-to-ride track, with spinners added to the traditional games.
We will be adding fencing along the side of the multi-use games area to prevent children falling off the edge.
The NGS Buzzing Garden is now five years old and to celebrate this milestone it received a visit from the Swedish Consulate. The visitors declared the Garden beautiful and appreciated the work carried out by volunteers.
We are now starting to plan improvements for next year, which will include heritage signage.
I would like to thank the Friends and all the volunteers for everything they do in the Park.
Kevin Hills
Gateshead Council
What an Apple Turnover!
October 2024
National Apple Day, the UK’s annual celebration of apples and orchards, was made special once again this year by the children from Brighton Avenue Primary School.
The choir, led by music teacher Miss Morgan, sang songs about fruit and vegetables that they had learned for harvest festival.
The children’s families and the Friends of Saltwell Park greatly enjoyed their performance and some apple-themed refreshments were appreciated by all.
The children and their parents enjoyed posing for portraits in the decorative face-board.
We would like to thank Tesco Extra in Trinity Square who again donated an apple and a carton of apple juice for each child to take away.
Heritage Open Days in Saltwell Park - September 2024
Our Heritage Open Days events in the Park in September were a great success and well attended. The Friends’ heritage walk was led by Chair Ian Daley and involved a guided walk from the main gate to Saltwell Towers, taking in many of the historic buildings and structures that make our Park so unique.
The heritage walk also included some of the locations that feature in the works of famous local artist Charlie Rogers. Art gallery owner Brian Rankin (see photo) presented six enlarged images of Charlie’s paintings and explained the background to each.
During the ‘conversations with sculptures’ event Eric Nicholson and Stewart Fraser took the group on a tour of some of the Park’s key sculptures.
The aim was for participants to share thoughts and feelings. Each sculpture evoked many different responses resulting from our varied life experiences.
Brighton Avenue Primary School pupils enjoy a visit to the park - September 2024
In September two classes of year 2 pupils came to Saltwell Park to spot birds, animals, insects and plants.
Guided by teachers, family helpers and some volunteers from the Friends of Saltwell Park, the children were able to find most of the items on their check list - and many more living things!
First raised bed complete.
04th September 2024
Today's work in the Orchard has been both productive and satisfying. We have completed and planted the first of our 9 new raised beds. This bed now has herbs planted in it.
If you would like to volunteer and help us in our orchard and raised beds area, please get in touch about volunteering options, or become a full member and support our activities to ensure Saltwell Park is looked after and developed for future generations.
Living and Working with the Kasena People of Ghana
In July Philip and Judy Hewer gave us a fascinating talk about their time spent in rural Ghana between 1972 and 2015. They lived among a language group on Ghana’s northern border, developing written materials in Kasem and training adult literacy volunteer teachers. Working with local people, they helped publish foundational reading materials, traditional stories and books about health and farming practices. Key to their work was facilitating a translation of the Bible into Kasem.
Judy and Philip learned Kasem through immersion in the local culture, since there were no books about the language. They had to listen carefully and write down words and phrases phonetically in order to analyse the grammar and develop a consistent writing system. They learned from their mistakes. Since Kasem is a tone language, they had to learn to say words on the right pitch or they might be completely misunderstood.
Their first home in the village of Paga was rented from the Chief. An early task was to construct a separate building for a pit latrine and washing facilities. Women and children came to get water from the single tap in the courtyard when the supply came on for an hour or so at dawn. Most homes were built using dried mud blocks, with family rooms arranged around a central yard where animals were brought in at night.
During Philip & Judy’s time in Ghana, there were big advances in the infrastructure, with electricity supply and mobile phone coverage dramatically changing the way of life in rural communities.
The Kasem Bible was launched and went on sale in
2015.
Green Flag Winners 2024
This year Saltwell Park once again received a Green Flag Award, an international mark of quality for parks and green spaces, from Keep Britain Tidy.
The Award reflects the hard work of those tasked with maintaining the park and keeping it looking so good.
The park also achieved Green Site Heritage Accreditation, supported by Historic England, for the management of its historical features.
Nature workshops with young people
Over the past few months we have had several more visits from the pupils of Brighton Avenue Primary School. The workshops focused on trees, honeybees and wild bees, and birds in Saltwell Park.
During our tree walk in spring, Year 1 pupils were shown the difference between evergreen and deciduous trees and identified some of the trees in the Park. They learned about different parts of trees and did bark rubbings on the trunks. They also enjoyed measuring the height of trees using different methods.
In June children from Reception were given a tour of the honey bee apiary and learned about the different roles of the queen, worker and drone bees. An observation hive enabled them to see how bees lived and worked when not out foraging. Trying on the hood of a beekeeping suit (quickly dubbed ‘astronaut suit’!) proved very popular. The children also visited the pollinator bed in the Apple Bee Community Orchard to spot wild bees and learned about the many different species of bee and their lives and habits.
Also in June, a group of Year 1 pupils enjoyed spotting and identifying birds with local ornithologist Michael Turner. During a tour of the lake, Buzzing Garden, Dene and other parts of the Park, the children learned the different calls of native and migratory birds and learned about their habits and lives.
All the events were greatly enjoyed by the children, their teachers and the Friends who helped with the organisation and took part on the day.
If you know of a local school that would be interested in bringing pupils to the Park to learn more about its fauna and flora please contact us.
Update from Gateshead Council
July 2024
I think it’s fair to say that this spring has been one of the wettest for a very long time! Although this has helped the grass grow it has also put us a bit behind with our maintenance programme in the Park. The grounds management team have been working hard to strip, condition and plant out the formal beds. These will add colour and an air of grandeur along the top terrace, around our memorials and at other places in the Park. The raised beds in the Apple Bee Community Orchard have also been rebuilt and are ready to use.
May saw the completion of the Changing Places accessible toilet and wet room facility — you can find out more about the scheme at changing-places.org
Having this facility will allow more members of the community and visitors from further afield to visit our wonderful Park and stay longer.
We also have more improvements to look forward to. Tarmac has been laid between the multi-use games area and the tennis courts and will soon be marked up with a ‘learn to ride your bike’ track along with hopscotch, snakes & ladders and a ‘twister’ game. The aviaries will be getting a much-needed refurbishment. After cleaning and sandblasting they will be re-painted and new signwritten tarpaulins put on the roofs.
This year we will be ‘mystery shopped’ for the Green Flag Award. We don’t get to know the judges have been until we receive the results, so fingers crossed!
Enjoy your summer in the Park, Kevin
Tree Walk - can you help?
Saltwell Park is home to many beautiful trees, many native, some rare or unusual and others from different parts of the world. The Friends have been given a number of maps by Gateshead Council showing the location of all the trees and other vegetation and we would like to organise a guided walk for visitors. But we need volunteers to help! If you have an interest in and knowledge of trees and could talk about them to others please get in touch.
Conversations with sculptures
Taking time to relax and look at art in all its forms has been shown to improve mental health by lifting the mood, reducing anxiety and stress and increasing wellness and contentment.
With that in mind, a group of Friends walked around the Park one Saturday in June to explore some of its sculptures and discuss reactions to them. Led by Eric Nicholson, we examined structures in stone, iron and other materials from different perspectives, comparing their shape, angles, construction and tactile surfaces. Eric explained each sculptor’s intention and we all enthusiastically shared our thoughts and opinions of each piece.
While every sculpture was appreciated on its own merits, two stood out in particular. Our photo shows ‘Rise’ by Stephen Newby. The bright sunshine meant the clothing of some participants was reflected in its shiny surface, creating a colourful rainbow effect. Was this perhaps in the sculptor’s mind when he created it?
2025 Sculpture Walk now available to book!
For full details click here
Blossom Day in the Park
“Few British sights are as uplifting or evocative as fruit tree boughs heavy with spring blossom, and nowhere is this more in evidence than in orchards. Partly man-made and partly natural, orchards are a meeting point of both worlds.” Orchard Network.
In late April the Friends met to see the abundance of blossom in the Apple Bee Community Orchard to celebrate Blossom Day, celebrated on 28 April in the UK. This is the third year of our Orchard and most of the trees are healthy and growing well. Their spring blossom provides pollen and nectar for bees and other pollinating insects, as our photo shows.
The Orchard is cared for by a team from the Friends, ably assisted by young people in our community who dug the planting holes and help with regular maintenance. Local schoolchildren also assisted with the planting and continue to visit and check on the progress of the trees.
After a tour of the Orchard and distribution of leaflets the Friends have produced about it, the group joined in a wassail, an annual tradition of blessing orchards to ensure a bountiful harvest. Our trees are still too young to produce sizeable apples but we hope wassailling will encourage them on their way!
“The creation of our Apple Bee Community Orchard was the brainchild of Judy Hewer, one of our members,” says Ian Daley, Chair, Friends of Saltwell Park. “ As well as providing a space for recreation and nature, the Orchard is an investment for younger generations who we hope will continue to look after it it for decades to come.
We could do with more volunteers to help with routine tasks in the Orchard – no special skills required! If you can spare a little time on a regular or ad hoc basis please get in touch!
Appealing apples in the orchard
11th June 2024
This years fruit is beginning to appear in our Apple Bee Community Orchard.
Thank you to all our volunteers who help to maintain and develop the orchard throughout the year.
New raised plant beds
June 2024
Our new raised plant beds have been installed, located close to our Community Apple Bee Orchard.
We plan to involve local schools in deciding what to plant and to look after them.