Why I love Stoke Lodge

On 16 September 2024, around 300 members of the local community gathered at St Mary’s Stoke Bishop to hear about the ongoing campaign to defend Stoke Lodge Village Green. As part of that meeting Kathy Welham, whose application for Town or Village Green status was successfully registered last year, and who is now the second defendant in Cotham School’s legal challenge to the village green, spoke movingly about why she loves Stoke Lodge. Here’s what Kathy said:

What Stoke Lodge means to me and why we are fighting

One June evening 20 years ago I first saw Stoke Lodge. I came in under the huge old boundary oak at the end of Cheyne Road. Looking out under the dim tent of the branches, at the acres of bright green grass, and the trees, and the huge grey sky, I took a deep breath of the calm, spacious air. And whichever of the many entrances I use, I still do that before going out onto the Lodge.

So it means space, and quiet, and a bit of time to think, of now and then and who and when. And to look – maybe examine the red flowers on the tough top Turkey oak, as you cross from Cheyne Rd to Parry’s Lane, or on your way from Ebenezer Lane or West Dene to the shops, or the bus stop, or your Gran’s house, or the school.

Stoke Lodge is the hub of its community, criss-crossed by spokes of connections and daily trips, old footpaths that emerge like ghosts in a drought, but are in use all the year, joining up people’s lives, stitching together a shifting but palpable community. 

You mightn’t know who you’ll meet today – but you’ll know them next time! 

And there’s room  to walk, or run, laps or steps, and have a kick about with your mates while your little sister goes on the swings, and your mum chats with someone from school. Room to be absorbed in what you’re doing or seeing, without interruptions,  is so rare – so precious – so necessary. Not to be a wellness bore, but the improved health outcomes linked to close-by, walkable access to local green space have been calculated to save the NHS millions annually. 

A drone’s eye view shows the parkland wrapped like a big green scarf round mellow, listed old Stoke Lodge House. This land, the original setting, was listed and protected alongside the House and the many important trees. Bristol City Council’s secretive, and still unexplained, removal of the parkland’s protection allowed Cotham Academy School to install fencing in breach of its lease.  It caused as yet unquantified environmental damage. 

Stoke Lodge was registered as a TVG in August 2023, ensuring public access, and protection of the land. The school is able to tap into public funding and its own reserves to challenge the registration, as you know. Its steadfast refusal to negotiate shared use of the land and stick to its lease is the reason we have no option but to fight their unlawful land grab. If we don’t, Stoke Lodge as it has been for so many years to so many people before us, will be gone. Lost to the community, its children and its children’s children;  lost to the old trees whose roots are in the way of hard pitches and carparks. And the many birds, and foxes and badgers and bats and hedgehogs and woodmice and slow worms and myriad invertebrates – all lost in the floodlights and nets and traffic noise. And that would be irretrievable.

What a drone’s eye view also shows is that the Lodge’s original green wrap of land is now itself surrounded by extensive residential development. Since World War One, Stoke Bishop has turned from countryside to suburb, and by the millennium Stoke Lodge was the very last freely accessible Public Open Space here. Most of the green we can see on this side of the Downs is privately owned. And make no mistake, there are thousands of people who rely on Stoke Lodge, that our local council promised us would always be open to us for recreation, and never fenced. It’s also a functioning link in the green chain that joins this suburb up to the Downs, and to Blaise, and on to Kingsweston. We are fighting for the wildlife, the historic trees of Stoke Lodge, the countless people for whom Stoke Lodge’s green and community space is a lifeline, and for the children of Bristol and their children – very much including the children of Cotham Academy School, who should be using the playing fields still. 

We’re fighting because Stoke Lodge is irreplaceable and on our watch we aim to keep it safe from the destruction and commercialisation Cotham School has said it intends.