Restoring Rivers Orchard: An interview with Diana Richards
Written by Elizabeth Waugh
Published on January 1, 2025.
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In the 1990s I was employed by the Countryside Management Service (CMS) to work mainly in Pishiobury Park. Susan Clark, previously a CMS colleague, had become a Rural Enterprise Project officer. She was at that time looking for a new project. I was someone who enjoyed taking walks around the open spaces of Sawbridgeworth and I had come across an area of overgrown and damaged fruit trees with many cowslips in spring in an area beyond the new hospital on land that had once been part of Rivers Nursery. I knew that local people still talked of their sense of loss when the great Nursery that had been part of the Sawbridgeworth scene for so long had closed, and there had been articles in the local papers remembering the company. I took Susan to see the scrubby area and she agreed - clearing and reviving the trees might make a good project. So we decided to take on restoration of this historic orchard.
East Herts Council at the time had rights to the area but was not taking any action. Susan and I started putting this project together in 1992 by going one day to see Martin Shroesbury, the Council solicitor, determined to talk to him however long we had to wait. Martin said the Council wouldn’t put money into the new project as there was already the open space at Pishiobury to fund. Moreover, there first had to be a Management plan.
Susan and I began writing letters to all the voluntary groups in Sawbridgeworth: the Scouts, the Mothers’ Union etc. A meeting followed; Hazel and David Mead were there from the Scouts. From that beginning a kind of group formed to share ideas which later became Friends of Rivers Orchard. Hazel eventually became vice-chair and I was chair. There were others helping from the early days. One was Eugene Keddy who started trying to identify tree names. Elizabeth Waugh too became involved and I named her ‘archivist’ and handed her the bags of wrinkled papers I was accumulating. Susan started the very important job of writing the Management Plan to be submitted to the Council. Everybody worked on the site chopping the scratchy brambles and the like.
John Sapsford was there too at the first meeting and he decided, then and there, to give the project £100 of his own money. His father had been a Nursery manager and he had great knowledge of those days. The Nursery was in his bones. Money was needed to buy tools to work on the area so various efforts to raise funds were made. Susan applied for funding through her job. I started giving talks about the project to get speaking fees and pass information around.
By this time we had organised regular volunteer days in the orchard to do the systematic clearing of scrub and exposing of the beautiful trees as well as lots of other jobs. People continued to come help from the groups we had contacted. I went up there on my own to work as well. It was fun, being outside in all weathers with a fire to burn debris and warm up beside.
I thought political influence was needed to ensure the Orchard’s future so I applied to stand for a Council seat. As there was a vacancy at the time, I was co-opted as a Council Member. I carried on for 12 years. Eric and Ruth Buckmaster have continued to work to make sure that local government protects the site.
Of all the voluntary work I have done in Sawbridgeworth, I am most proud of this project. I still tell everyone about it!
Diana Richards. One of the founders of Friends of Rivers Nursery, the first volunteer group to rescue the Rivers Orchard. Photo taken by Elizabeth Waugh in June 2024. |
Susan Clark and a working party clearing the scrub from the Rivers Orchard in 2004. |