Starting to look like a football club again

It has been a busy few weeks at Hill Park with lots of progress on the pitch and in clubhouse.

The first stages of the roof are complete so we can finally appreciate the scale of the building.

Our Men’s First Team sponsor and specialist contractor Insa-rend are on site fitting the exterior walls on the first floor so we can start to get a sense of the space within the new clubhouse. The walls will be finished with sweet chestnut cladding on the outside which will sit perfectly with the backdrop of the South Downs National Park.

On the ground floor the insulation is going down ready for the under floor heating and floor screed. The exterior doors have been delivered, and the windows are on their way!

Now we can start to work on the interior fixtures and fittings. Kitchen plans are being finalised, thanks to input from our brilliant in-house catering team Shaun & Helen.

We had the pleasure of looking at flooring samples this week, looking at ideas for the clubhouse and picking shades of grey for the practical areas. We are now working on designing the fixtures for the changing rooms, the officials rooms, offices and the football areas of the ground floor – all the exciting stuff!

Anyone that has been down to Hill Park in the last week will notice things are looking a lot greener!

Our pitch contractors Hunts have worked hard to lay the 3G carpet and we are all fascinated at the skill involved in getting the line markings so precise. It’s fair to say the footballing side of the committee are so excited they are lacing up their boots already!

Final touches to go on the pitch, dugouts and goals to be installed, then just the public areas and fencing to finish and we will be in a position to start getting matches back on at home while we continue the clubhouse build.

Meanwhile our landscaping team are ready to start work reinstating the bank, reseeding it to form a chalk meadow and we are preparing for the arrival and planting of 420 trees next month as part of our ecology and sustainability commitments.

We’ve all watched Grand Designs, we know how it goes with hurdles and delays, but as a small group of volunteers we never imagined the level of detail that goes into building a clubhouse and renovating the grounds. Every brick, every blade of grass (real and synthetic), every light bulb, the list of decisions is endless…but we are getting there and when we turn up on site and see THIS pitch in THIS setting it makes it all worthwhile.