Help preserve Newstead Abbey

CALLS have been made this week to do more to promote and preserve Newstead Abbey, and I couldn’t agree more.

North Nottinghamshire is blessed with many excellent tourist attractions and areas of natural beauty, and Newstead Abbey is up there with the best of them.

The Abbey represents the nation’s glorious past, it represents history… above all it is a site of national heritage that we must all be very proud off and must maintain for generations to come.

We ALL must do more. But what can we do to help make the most of the wonderful abbey? I’m just one person, what can I do I hear you all cry?….well for one thing, visit it. If we all visited the attraction more often the surge in visitor numbers would help address the shortfall between what is needed to maintain the abbey and how much money is available to finance the repairs.

An increase in interest and visitor numbers would also surely give a little nudge to the powers-that-be at Nottingham City Council. More interest equals more desire and more effort to promote the abbey and pour funds into its coffers.

Of course the public cannot do it all themselves, and more vision is needed from Nottingham City Council and other interested organisations.

More must be done to build on the name of Lord Bryon, more must be done to attract more regular avenues of funding such as concerts, school educational events, attractions in the ground.

More must be done to make people want to step onto the Abbey. The Abbey has stood in all its glory for hundreds of years and has even withstood a civil war, what a crying shame it would be if our generation could not protect the abbey as our ancestors once did.

Olympic dreams

So Ashfield is set to be an Olympic venue……ok it’s not the host city, but it’s a start.

Athletes from across the globe will now gather to put the finish touches to their preparations for the London 2012 games at Ashfield School’s spanking running track. And what a big lift it will give to our district.

The news means youngsters from Ashfield will get a first hand glimpse of the world’s best athletes and can feel part of the Olympic dream.

The Olympic dream of course has to start somewhere. Seb Coe didn’t just become a world class athlete from nowhere and who knows, maybe the visit of athletes will set a young Ashfield competitor on the road to future Olympic glory.

But even if that is not the case, Ashfield has been put on the map and can now feel a genuine part of the most famous games in the world….it is not just a London event, it is now a national spectacular.

And great credit for this must, of course, go to headteacher Ian Fraser and other staff members at the school who helped make this possible.

For without their wonderful work and dedication to bring the state-of-the-art facility to the school, none of this would be possible.

Thanks to their commitment, Ashfield now has a facility to be proud of, a facility to encourage sportsmen and woman of the future and a lasting legacy for the school.

The 2012 games will be a great success….and I’m sure the Olympic visit to Ashfield will go down just as well.