Park

In all my years living in Sheffield, I have rarely visited Norfolk Park - to the south east of the city but I went there again today. Above, I am  pretty pleased with that autumnal photograph of the gatehouse at the Granville Road entrance.

It is a sprawling park of some seventy acres with woodland and open spaces. It once belonged to the Dukes of Norfolk and was part of extensive hunting grounds. Eventually, in 1910, the entire area was given to the people of Sheffield by the then Duke of Norfolk though one should not necessarily think of this as an act of generous munificence. It was more complicated than that.

Below, the arched stone doorway remains but the building it once accessed is gone. It was a tearoom and pavilion. The inscription above the doorway commemorates the official transfer of the parkland into public ownership.

On a park noticeboard, someone had affixed this sticker. It refers to a subject that is close to my heart. Badgers have been here on the island of Britain for at least half a million years and yet in the last two decades they have become something of a scourge in the eyes of certain onlookers. Badgers are blamed for spreading tuberculosis in cattle even though the evidence for this is very shaky indeed. 

The last government came up with a culling scheme that involved hiring marksmen to shoot badgers. The whole process has been deliberately shrouded in mystery but we know that thousands of badgers have been killed - or perhaps a better word would indeed be "murdered"...

In Norfolk Park, there were many fallen leaves blown into piles, all higgledy-piggledy making interesting  natural collages even though most of them have recently lain under piles of snow:-

As near as dammit, I walked the entire circumference of the park. American grey squirrels darted about and an old woman was taking her two old dogs for a slow walk even though her body was bent and she needed the assistance of two crutches. She was talking to herself and to her dogs quite loudly as I overtook her. I wondered what would happen if she fell over for I very much doubt that she could have got herself up again. Below,  a lone human was walking under the trees... 

From several locations in Norfolk Park you get  clear views of the city centre and St Paul's Tower, an apartment block which is the tallest building in Sheffield...