PLAYING PITCH DRAINAGE AT CARR BRIDGE
The quality of the playing fields at Carr Bridge and their ability sustain uninterrupted use throughout a
season has been diminishing with the number of cancelled games increasing every year. It is also
clear that, whatever improvements were recommended, these were likely to be at a capital cost
beyond the reach of the Parish Council.
Having undertaken a feasibility study with soil investigations, a drainage strategy and a cost plan, the
Parish Council asked Steve Wells Associates to make an application to Sport England's highly
competitive Protecting Playing Fields funding programme in March 2014. Later that year, Sport
England awarded the Parish Council a grant of just over £60,000 to undertake its improvement works.
Carr Bridge playing fields are owned by the Ackworth School and leased to the Parish Council. They
lie on the flood plain to the Went Beck and occasional flooding can be seen to the north-east corner of
the site after prolonged and heavy rain. But this is not the major issue facing the playing fields.
Other than being heavily used during the winter games season, Carr Bridge is a well-used public
space throughout the year including the Annual Gala. This use, year on year, has compacted the top
few inches of the playing surface so that, during intense and heavy rain, water lies on the surface until
it can eventually soak away.
Because the River Went is prone to flooding downstream, the Environment Agency will not allow any
land drainage to the Carr Bridge playing fields to 'outfall' into the Went Beck. Hence, any drainage
strategy needed to focus on increasing the playing fields 'capacity' by containing surface water on site.
To comply with the grant conditions imposed by Sport England, works to improve the playing fields
needed to be professionally developed into a set of drawings, specifications with quantities that could
be tendered competitively to specialist sports ground contractors. These contract documents were
drawn up by Steve Wells Associates with tenders returned in April 2015. While works could have
started straight after the end of the football season, it was sensible to allow the Annual Gala to take
place on the 27th June without the disruption of the drainage works.
The design intent was to open up the soil's capacity to allow it to accommodate more rainfall below
ground before it appeared on the surface. These works included the provision of a large linear
soakaway at the lowest levels across the northern extent of the playing fields. To the south of this,
the main football pitch was improved with 'gravel banding' with slits excavated every metre to around
300mm deep and filled with rounded gravel. To the south of the site where the soils were shallower
and, in part, underlain by red shale, a different technique was employed. Here, the site was topdrained using a specialist machine that excavated three 40mm wide trenches at a time to 150mm
deep and 500mm apart and then simultaneously filled them with clean sand of the correct particle
size and roundness (brought in from Mansfield).
Once completed, the whole of the site was treated with a non-residual selective herbicide to kill off all
broadleaved weeds and unwanted species, followed by a high nitrogen fertiliser, a dressing of sand
at around 10kg/m2 and seeded with an approved playing field seed mix. Finally, and later in the year
when the seed has germinated and been cut, and when the soil is 'plastic', the playing fields will be
decompacted using a Vertidrain.
All of these works are intended to open up the ground, to improve its porosity and to increase its
capacity. At the same time, improvements to the sward will see a grass cover more capable of
sustaining the wear of an intense football season rather than the sparse and weed infested pitches of
a year ago.
Of course, these operations will take time to establish with improvements to the grass the most
readily seen while the hidden drainage going to work when the wet weather inevitably returns. The
Parish Council hopes that the footballers will understand that the playing fields will take time for the
grass to knit together and that this will depend on the weather we have this summer. But with
continued care by the Parish Council's dedicated maintenance team, Carr Bridge Playing Fields will
be left in much better heart.