The King’s School

The King’s School, Gloucester, is currently thriving. During the pandemic the role increased and it has a growing reputation as a superb place to gain an education. The school has been part of the fabric of central Gloucester since it was founded in 1541.

One consequence of growing pupil numbers – they have risen from around 600 to around 700 – is that the sports facilities take ever more of a pounding and the pressure to keep them in tip top quality is ramped up all the time.

What it means is that Grounds Manager, Richard Bowman, is always looking towards what is available, and at the forefront of cutting edge technology, to provide solutions.

“We got our new artificial pitch installed in 2019 by Verde Recreo, of Bath, which is great. Prior to that, we had to hire artificial pitches but with the school level of a hockey increasing at the school having our own pitch is important,” said Richard, adding that with Covid, closing the school during lockdowns, the new pitch is to all intents and purposes still brand new.

“For the first year Verde carried out the on-going maintenance and cleaning as part of the initial contract and, because of Covid and staff being furloughed, we carried on with Verde for the second year as well. This year we purchased our own – the GKB Top Clean – which goes on the back of our John Deere 1026r tractor. Verde were cleaning it once a month for us, but we are now able to clean the pitch once a week because we’ve got the kit and we’ve got the manpower to do it,” said Richard, adding that with a Headmaster and a Bursar both keen on hockey, they understand the required on-going maintenance for an artificial pitch, and that it’s not maintenance free.

One of the areas on the new sand

dressed pitch which does need more work than would normally be the case is spraying for moss.

“We gang mow the natural pitches next door and the grass clippings fly through the air, through the fence, and land on the first four metres of the pitch and they shoot. So, we have to spray Roundup along that edge just to keep it weed free.”

Now an established within the school’s facilities it is fair to say that the pitch is well utilised.

“It’s used seven days a week, as we also take external bookings including from Gloucester city Hockey Club and Hartpury College. Last Saturday, for example, it was used from 9am until the last match which started at 4pm, playing 8 matches through the day’.

The one downside of the new pitch is that it was built on Archdeacon Meadow, the existing playing field, thus reducing the space Richard and his team have for natural pitches while it also cuts down one the available time for cutting and preparation.

“We actually lost two cricket squares and a rugby pitch. Rounders is no longer on the curriculum for girls as there are no clubs for them to join once they have left school and the ECB is pushing girls’ cricket. But now we have one cricket wicket for both the boys and the girls, so we now have to hire cricket pitches from outside the school. It can be challenging at times,” revealed Richard.

Acquiring more land would be the answer, but being in the middle of Gloucester, close to the cathedral, land is difficult to come by and is much sought after by developers hoping to build residential accommodation and prepared to pay a lot more money than the school could justify spending.

There is one potential piece of land which has been identified but it happens to be on a flood plain, making it less attractive to the developers but it would offer further challenges in itself.

“I’ve spoken to people who work on grounds which floods and they tell me that usually, within a couple of days of flooding, they can get back out there again.

Currently there is rugby six days a week and the three pitches are trained on five days a week, with matches played on Saturdays. Previously play could be shared around the pitches but now, with fewer pitches in the mix, they are all used extensively.

“Then matches are played on Saturday’s – sometimes consecutive games on the same pitch. We used }

to have one which was designated as the first team pitch, but we have to keep moving them around now, so if one is wearing a bit we try to move to another area,

“We have started to hire another pitch, only a few hundred yards away from our sports ground. we take three mini bus loads of children straight from the main school site half a mile away over there on Tuesdays and Thursdays for training just to relieve the pressure a little bit. But it does come at a cost,” said Richard, who is also extremely proud of the fact that as Chairman of Huntley Cricket Club, the ground is also used by the school for their cricket matches and training. The school will be looking to increase the the areas needed to play cricket this year and will be looking at hiring other grounds.

So, with so much pressure on the pitches, and as a result so much pressure on Richard and the team to cut and maintain them, an outside the box approach needed to be taken to achieve the sorts of results which are demanded now from all top schools.

That team currently consists of Richard; Deputy, Dave Jones, Jack Wear, who started out as apprentice, and part-time gardener, Howard Reed.

Richard himself started at the school in 1999 as apprentice and worked there for 10 years before moving into contracting for a couple of years, working for a company which offered him other opportunities including tree surgery work.

“I learned a lot of additional skills there but my ex-boss at the school handed his notice in, to go off and do contracting work, so the school phoned me up and asked if I’d be interested in returning as Head Groundsman. A few years after that I was promoted to Grounds Manager in charge of gardens, trees, everything outside really,” said Richard, who actually admits to enjoying the health and safety and personnel work side of the job.

“We have started to look at robotic mowers which would enable us to cut pitches at times of the day when we wouldn’t normally cut and free up the team to carry out other tasks,” explained Richard.

He is currently looking at two companies, AMS and Husqvarna, the latter of which provides the school’s battery powered hand tools.

“When it comes to the robots and cutting cricket fields the AMS has the edge, as they can cut to 12 mil while the Husqvarna only goes down to 20 mil. We actually had a visit from Husqvarna’s main man, over from Sweden. We were the second school he visited and we’d both said the same thing to him about height of cut.

“He said to us that it wasn’t an issue in Sweden as football was the

summer sport and 20mil was ideal for that. It is fine for football and rugby but when it comes to schools in this country you have to be able to go down to changeable heights.

“It is a shame as, with all of our Husqvarna battery equipment, you can link it up to an App which logs data so, as a manager, I can assess the data so I can put a service programme together.”

The AMS is a fine machine with a 12 hour battery life and programmed to return to its docking station when it needs a charge or if it goes out and, it’s not actually cutting anything, it will return to the docking station again.

“I can set up a programme for it to come out every evening at 8 o’clock and cut or I can control it from an App and if there is an hour’s slot when there is no play on a pitch I can have it cut for that hour. It wouldn’t cut the whole area but you can send it out again later to complete the job. It’s very intelligent.

“Everything on paper sounds quite promising about them,” said Richard, as he waited to sign off on the final deal.

“As for downsides it may mean more thatch as they will be cutting more. We will have to wait and see, but we are cutting and dropping anyway. But it will definitely give us more chance to get work done that we can’t do at the moment because we are spending our time cutting. If we can get out there with the scarifier or the brush it is all addition work which will help improve the quality of our surfaces so hopefully they will get stronger and visually better, which is a big part of it nowadays.

“I see it as being a big help to us and benefit to the school,” said Richard, who admitted that he was always keen on new technology and interested in innovation.

“I’m not stuck in traditional ways. I look at things that come onto the market and try to work out if it would benefit us. As soon as I saw the robots, I started making noises to my bursar – mentioning about cost savings, particularly now with Red Diesel going off the market for us in schools,” he revealed.

There are two sites at the school the main one and a smaller one for the junior school, just a football pitch and 200 metre running track. I wanted to put the robot on there first, but the Head Master wanted it on the main field first but eventually we’d want to have two of them to cut both sites and then in the future going into the gardens and going around the school with robots too,” he said, adding that quality of cut is right up there with STRI giving them a strong rating.

“The blade is the equivalent of a Stanley blade and you have to change them every six weeks or so. You turn them around and so use both sides for 12 weeks, while it is £25 to replace the unit.”

Other companies which Richard uses include Tallis Amos, the local dealer who supplied his John Deere and SISIS machinery; DLF from whom they get both Masterline and Johnson’s Prem Wicket and J multi Sport seed, and Agrovista, from whom they get chemicals and fertilisers.

It is fair to say that The King’s School, Gloucester, is thriving and bursting at the seams but with forward thinkers like Richard and the appliance of modern science the school is only heading in one direction.