Alfold Bars - Sports and Leisure

Sports and Leisure

The Loxwood Sports Association has an improving football team - Loxwood F.C. or Magpies - which has been promoted six times in nine years now playing in the Sussex county league division 2. Facilities include a floodlit match pitch with a 100 seater stand, a full size practice/reserves pitch, and a full sized cricket pitch and practice nets. The Football Club operates in close cooperation with the Kirdford FC to provide excellent coaching facilities for younger plays to feed into the Loxwood FC senior sides. Also active at the LSA are clubs for Cricket, Stoolball, Squash, Darts, Snooker and Billiards, and a walking/jogging path through some of the woodlands bordering part of the multi-acre site. The LSA Clubs are largely self-funding through the membership and other fees levied on members, a tribute to the commitment of those members. With grassed areas very much larger than 3 full sized football pitches, ground management is a major all year round job conducted by expert volunteers.

The village hall, North Hall, named for a most generous local donor and built between the great World Wars, has recently been modernised and extended under an able and energetic Management Committee. Generous grants have been made by charities, individual donors and both District and Parish Councils in support of many fund raising activities. Under the energetic volunteers successive Loxwood's "Chelsea Flower" show and Village Fetes have been great attractions raising thousands of pounds of much needed funds. The Hall now offers an attractive upstairs meeting room for up to 25 seated people meeting at the same time as larger activities in the main hall. The main hall has a full sized badminton court, a raised stage and can seat 100 people. A well equipped kitchen facilitates catering for even large events, and BBQs can be used to advantage in warmer weather using the foods provided by the local butcher, John Murray and Loxwood Stores. Many groups including singers, children's ballet classes, line dancing, art groups, Mothers and Toddlers, use the Hall, and the Parish Council meets in the small meeting room. A feature for 2010 and 2011, continuing into 2012 is a monthly Jazz and Blues Club organised by a local Jazz musician that attracts many people from a considerable distance both to play and to be in the paying audience. The Jazz Club provides much needed funds to the restoration and maintenance of North Hall thanks to the generously low costs of the musicians and the hard work of the Management Committee selling refreshments.

In the grounds of North Hall a recent addition was made by the generous donation of a wonderful 'wildwood' and substantial copse by the landowners. The Loxwood Community Gardens Initiative group has developed areas of plantings of native Sussex trees and bushes and a fruit orchard. A number of hop plants remind us of the quality of Sussex Ales brewed locally! A shallow stream with overhanging branches affords adventurous youngsters opportunities for play not available to town dwellers, while for the younger children a small children's playground is equipped with swings, slides, climbs and a roundabout. The same LCGI group has restored the area adjacent to the Village Telephone Kiosk, and indeed the Kiosk itself; its most recent triumph has been to take a large bramble patch on Station Road bought by the Parish Council from a property developer, to create Loxwood's Jubilee Garden as a memorial to Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee. The LCGI celebrated the opening of the garden with a friendly BBQ for 70 or so members of the group on Friday 1 June 2012.

The Loxwood Historical Society was formed in 2009 gathering many valuable documents, maps, books and artefacts from Parish and private holdings. Work is underway to create on on-line resource showing much of the collection, and in time the many gaps in the history of Loxwood may become available in a single on-line resource by continuing efforts of these volunteers.

All in all the people of Loxwood have developed a modern self-help approach to much in their community. Other examples include a 21 year long but ultimately successful campaign to have a 40 mph speed limit imposed on the Guildford Road between Loxwood village and the border with Surrey to the north of Alfold Bars, and the development of close relations with Sussex Police to implement the first Sussex Community Speedwatch with simultaneous recording of speeding drivers for Operation Crackdown - more than 500 drivers were recorded as driving in an anti-social fashion over a short period. Bad driving practices other than speeding included eating a banana while both talking on a handheld mobile phone and apparently driving a car, driving while turned around to talk to children in the back of the car, a truck driver who leant through the cab window to curse the volunteers roundly over a 30 metre stretch of especially dangerous road. It's no surprise that Sussex suffers from a high road traffic accident rate; the combination of poor roads (WSCC plead poverty caused by the low level of distributions from Central Government) and such dreadful driving practices makes this certain.