Due to its uniqueness and natural beauty, Springhead is being preserved by the charity The Springhead Trust, both for now and in the future, for the benefit of people of all ages and from all walks of life to be used as a resource for creative learning and a place of sustainability awareness and enjoyment.
The charity cannot rely on its income alone, but depends on the valuable support of various funding bodies and volunteers who help to maintain and make improvements to the buildings and seven acres of gardens and grounds.
The Springhead Trust Limited Charity Number: 1112083 Company Register Number: 5370640
The Springhead Trust was set up in 1973 in memory of Rolf Gardiner, a pioneer ecologist. He was an organic farmer and forester, a founder member of the Soil Association and, in the face of the growth of industrial farming, a passionate believer in rural sustainability.
Our mission
Springhead relies heavily on grants and donations, but we also generate income from our activities. We constantly look to increase revenue opportunities provided that the activities fit properly with our objectives. Examples of our revenue raising activities are:
the corn mill was closed and the buildings were used by the Eclipse Bottle Stopping Machine Company for making Crown bottle tops. But in 1907 its use changed again when it was occupied by the Blackmore Vale Dairy Company for making cheese.
I am writing to thank you for another year’s support and to let you know what we have been able to do with the help of your kind donations. The total sum raised by Friends’ membership and personal donations totalled more than £6,000 in 2015 enabling us to continue with the general improvement of the facilities for visiting schools, maintaining the lake side gardens as well as being able to undertake a series of specific projects
We are currently fundraising for three small projects
We are hoping to exceed 100 Friends in 2016 and as soon as we have reached this target we will effectively have the funds for the new dining room floor. We will also be collecting donations towards these items during our wonderful Christmas Fair – The Garden of Delights – at the end of November but if any of you know of any additional ways in helping us reach our goals for the three items above we would be interested in hearing from you.
The Springhead Trust was set up in memory ofRolf Gardiner, a pioneer ecologist. He was an organic farmer and forester, a founder member of the Soil Association and,in the face of the growth of industrial farming, a passionate believer in rural sustainability. His wife Marabel was an advocate of the arts, holding festivals, concerts and theatrical spectacles in Springhead’s magical lakeside setting.
The Rotunda Open Air Theatre provides an outdoor performance space facing a series of tiered terraces in front of the Rotunda, one of the focal points of Springhead’s beautiful gardens.
The purpose of this is to enable the Springhead Trust, whose objects and current activities are primarily directed towards raising environmental awareness, to fulfil its principal purposes by both enhancing the gardens and cultivating the performing arts and widening the outreach of theTrust to the local community.
The new theatre space will see the revival of a Springhead tradition, the staging of dramatic performances and music making by both professionals and amateurs. Importantly, the Rotunda Theatre will provide a unique setting for educational programmes involving, in particular, local schools.
Having the Rotunda Open air Theatre in place will take this to a new level, enabling creative and dramatic presentations and performances to be produced at Springhead. Education is increasingly looking to the creative areas to help children develop fully as individuals and to inspire them; a venue such as this will give them the opportunity to present their work, developing further key skills as well as their own sense of achievement. For many children, especially those living in challenging circumstances, experiences such as this can be life changing and it is an encouraging development in education that the value of such experiences is now being recognised again. Many local, rural primary schools struggle to find appropriate performance venues. For a local school working, for example, on a Shakespeare project based on one of the plays, a resource such as the Rotunda Theatre at Springhead would be a wonderful venue to bring everything together with both residential accommodation and performance. The lake, gardens and local history offer many possibilities for other creative starting points that we could see developing well into the future.
‘Shakespeare in the Garden’ A production of scenes from the Bard’s best-loved plays with particular emphasis on ‘A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream’ (June 2011)
We are keen to maintain the work of Springhead as a centre for creative and sustainable learning and during the next two years we are planning to implement the following main goals:
