Allendale Sports Club to get new facilities

Dec 22 2008 by Richard Fletcher, The Journal

A FOUR-year, £310,000 campaign to help Northumberland sports groups has finally achieved its aims.

Allendale Sports Club, which is a hub for all sorts of sports in the area, has managed to turn a patch of land in Allendale into football pitches and parking facilities, and now will soon have a pavillion and changing rooms as well.

The foundations for the new buildings were laid last week and the walls will begin to take shape soon. The building will be about 22 metres by 12 metres, and should take 26 weeks to build.

Sports club vice chairman David Robson said: “It’s fantastic, it’s been a great achievement for a small community like Allendale. Up until four years ago it was just a patch of land and now we have a great football pitch.

Some of the money came from the Football Foundation and some came from Tynedale District Council. The sports club also carried out its own fund-raising through five-a-side tournaments.

The development was then created in stages, with the football pitches being the first to take shape so that local teams no longer had to play on land which had pereviously been used for farming.