In traditional children's comics park keepers were always nasty, bad-tempered men wielding rakes, but Sharon Griffiths meets the modern-day version and finds the role much changed

EARLIER this year, Conservative leader David Cameron pledged that in a bid to give children the freedom to play, they would bring back parkkeepers.

Immediately, in those of a certain age, there leapt an image of an elderly uniformed man locking the gates on small boys or - Beano-style - chasing them angrily with a rake.

Forget that. Cameron was probably thinking of someone like Angela Welford, who looks after North Lodge Park in Darlington.

Angela is one of the new generation of parkies. And it's probably easier to start off by saying what she doesn't do.

"I'm not a traditional parkie, not a warden dealing with troublemakers - the police do that," she says. "I don't do maintenance or tree lopping or heavy gardening - the council teams do that."

At the moment she works part-time and her role, she says, is "more of an overview, keeping in touch with all the people who have input into the park,"

and, above all, "encouraging people to use the park and enjoy it".

North Lodge Park is a fairly small park, 12 acres in what is probably the most ethnically diverse part of the town.

It is surrounded by busy commercial premises, nightclubs, Indian restaurants, a halfway house for the homeless, terraced houses and a mosque. But, just as when it was opened 105 years ago, it provides a vital green lung for all its neighbours.

"Most of the houses don't have gardens, so this is their garden," says Angela, "and in the fine weather, it's very popular with office workers , just taking time out from work, eating their sandwiches, enjoying the sunshine."

EVEN on a cold, grey April morning there were plenty of people there, dog walkers, old men chatting, young mums and grannies with small children enjoying the well-equipped playground.

"There's a group of old men who come here nearly every day to sit on the bench and put the world to rights. Then nearly every evening the Bangladeshi boys come and play football. They play right into the dark. They love their football."

Seven years ago a group of enthusiastic local residents formed the Friends of North Lodge Park, to prevent it from decay and to keep it as a centre for the community.

"It does act as a centre, a focal point and brings people together because so many different people use it," says Angela.

The Friends have done a terrific job, breathed new life into the park, gained charitable status and organised all sorts of events, planted trees and, above all, made the neighbourhood think of North Lodge as belonging to them.

Angela's work is funded by the Groundwork Trust. "I'm really building on the excellent work done by the Friends," she says.

She has a degree in environmental studies and worked as an education officer in the wonderful little city farm that used to be in Byker, Newcastle, before it got redeveloped as Ouseburn. She took time out to look after her children, now four and seven years old, and her 16- year-old stepson, and she loves her job.

Not that it's all a stroll in the park.

"I always start by having a good look round. It's not my job to pick up littler, but of course I pick up some. And I also look for needles. That's a sad fact of life, I'm afraid, and report on any vandalism.

"Yes we get vandalism, but, on the whole, I think it's not really that bad. It's certainly no worse than other places and may even be a bit better."

The splendid Victorian bandstand, for instance, is boarded up - the Friends are working on a grant to get it restored.

They have some Heritage Lottery funding and were hoping to get the rest from Northern Rock. But it remains remarkably un-graffitied, with poems in place on each side, so that even though unrestored, it doesn't look unloved.

As well as the playground and the hard-surface court, the park boasts a splendid bowling green, which might not be quite as posh as the one in South Park but which gets well used.

The park is a wonderful outdoor space for children to play and let off steam, but some parents are understandably reluctant to let their children use it. So another of Angela's roles is as a sort of playleader.

"We have official council-run play schemes in the park, but what I do is less formal, more a case of coming down with bats and balls and getting the children to join in. It's all free and a bit of fun to get them running round. And because parents know there's an adult around, they're happy to let their children come.

"But parks are not just about physical health. I think they contribute a lot of people's mental well-being. Even if you just come here and sit and listen to the birds or watch the squirrels, it's time out, relaxation, and we don't always realise how important that is."

North Lodge Park even had its own writer-in-residence, poet Maureen Almond, who produced a book of poems, Tongues in Trees, during her time and donated it to the Friends to raise funds to buy more trees.

The area round North Lodge must be one of the most mixed in Darlington, which also gives the park another role.

"Yes, we have people coming out of the clubs and into the park in the early hours, but the nightclub and restaurants are good neighbours to us," says Angela.

"We also have a lot of Eastern European families who come here a lot with their children. Again, that's nothing formal, but it's a place where people of different backgrounds can just meet naturally and if their children play together that's a great way of breaking the ice, of getting to know people."

Angela is now half way though her two-year appointment and she and the Friends have all sorts of plans they would like to put into practice.

"There's still some anti-social behaviour that we'd like to sort out. We do have a couple of corners that are a bit isolated from the rest. If we could open those up, it might help," she says.

There's the bandstand to restore, also a splendid fountain. "And it would be lovely to have a café. That's something the older residents are particularly keen on."

And although the council supplies the gardening team, there is some scope too for residents to get involved with special areas of planting, for instance. More involvement, more ownership and a chance for neighbours without gardens to have the pleasure of planting something and seeing it grow.

The many benefits of parks have been proved time and again, which is why after a couple of decades in which many parks were allowed to get run-down, councils have been making real efforts to restore them and working with local communities to find the best ways of doing this.

"My job is still fairly new, but there could be all sorts of ways in which it could develop. In the end it is to make the park a pleasant place for as many people as possible to use."

Not just a new generation of parkkeepers, but, with luck, the model for many more.

9:29am Tuesday 29th April 2008

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