Bringing back the beck, And bringing the team together

The beck that runs through Hull Road Park runs from the Warthill area, East of York, all the way to the Foss. Over the years, it’s been artificially widened with concrete banks and weirs slowing down the flow and causing silt to build up.

St Nicholas Fields is a York charity running projects and events to make York more sustainable. They’ve been working to restore the beck for several years now, as part of their ‘Green Corridors York’ project. They want to open up the area with a naturalised beck running though it – which will be better for wildlife and more accessible for local residents to enjoy.

But they couldn’t do it without the help of volunteers, and Jonathan Dent from St Nicholas Fields has been coordinating their work:

“Without the support of York Cares, we’d still be working on this in 2030! It only works by getting bigger groups of volunteers in, which is what York Cares does – and those volunteers are going to make a massive improvement to the local environment.”

One of the people who will benefit from these improvements is Rachel Wilson. She was part of a team from Aviva who volunteered as part of the York Cares Big Community Challenge. She also happens to be moving to the area soon and is looking forward to walking her dog along the newly restored beck.

Rachel and her team from Technical Accounting spent a morning clearing plants and rubble from the edge of the beck so that people can see the water again.

It’s the third or fourth time she’s volunteered through York Cares and she loves the different dynamic it brings to the team:

“You get to talk to each other in a different way and spend time with people doing something that isn’t work. It’s also great to be able to give something back to the community.

“We wouldn’t have known how to do this without York Cares. They made everything so easy – we just gave them our dates and they matched us to work that needed doing.”

Holly Hennell is manager at York Cares. For the Big Community Challenge, she and her team have matched volunteers to projects all over York, with a blitz of activity throughout June. The work in Hull Road Park is part of this:

“It’s incredible to see so many people coming out and making a difference – and to have the support of companies like Johnsons of Whixley, who have donated plants for us to use. We have people here today from Aviva, City of York Council, the University of York and boxxe. They’re making such a tangible difference, you can see how much progress they’ve made today – and if they come back in a year’s time, when the grasses and plants have bedded in, they’ll be able to say ‘I did that!’”