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...
Beautiful park, but what I love most is the doorway to, well, nowhere really ...
ReplyDeleteI guess that's life - unless of course you are religious.
DeleteAnother beautiful park.
ReplyDeleteMany Sheffielders hardly know that it is there.
DeleteWhat do badgers eat. We have badgers here but I've never seen one.
ReplyDeleteYou walked the circumference of 70 acres? I am impressed. The first picture is so very pretty.
ReplyDeleteThe doorway is fascinating! And of course now I want to live in that gatehouse.
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking us to a park we've rarely (if ever?) seen on your blog.
The gateway is a bit of an honour system really. The gatehouse looks quite interesting.
ReplyDeleteLovely autumnal photos, and the gatehouse is particularly photogenic. The doorway is a nice touch framing part of the view.
ReplyDeleteSometime ago I saw a TV programme which proved that Badgers didn't pass on tuberculosis to either cattle or humans. I may be wrong, but I think the conclusion was that the TB gene is actually in the cattle.
Parks are living lungs especially in the city. Could some of the seventy acres be used for allotments?
ReplyDeleteIt looks a lovely park.
ReplyDeleteI feel like maybe the poor old badgers are being blamed unfairly
Interesting stuff. While TB is starting to pop up again in U.S. cattle herds, most experts say it is due to interactions with infected whitetail deer and not badgers, which we also have in parts of our country. I tried to find if our badger population has TB but quickly get inundated with British sites on the subject and it was nearly impossible to find one addressing the issue here.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely park. There are a lot of parks around my city with that same feel - beautiful green spaces but not a lot of people there. I so enjoy visiting them and taking in the ambiance of what once was.
ReplyDeleteReally lovely photos.
ReplyDeleteHow did American grey squirrels get there, Neil? Did they stowaway aboard ocean liners?
ReplyDeleteI love the photos you took, my favorite being the pile of colorful leaves.
A great place for a walk. If she should fall, she will wonder if this is where they will find her, decomposing into the earth, or will the dogs lead help back to her.
ReplyDeleteDid you go through the doorway? Maybe in certain circumstances it leads to another world... ;-) (It reminds me of the Narnia books.) Lovely autumn photos, all of them!
ReplyDeleteLovely autumnal photos. The arched doorway looks like a picture frame.
ReplyDeleteThe arched doorway is interesting. I'm with you on the badger cull. It's appalling that it's still happening. I don't know how DEFRA has so much power and seems to answer to no one but misguided cattle owners. The government changes but the culling continues.
ReplyDelete