Maidenhead Hockey Club retains 'vision' for future amid grassroots sport pressures

A hockey club with more than 120 years of history is continuing its search for a permanent base where its pitches and clubhouse can finally sit side by side.

Maidenhead Hockey Club plays its matches at Altwood School but uses facilities at Maidenhead and Bray Cricket Club – more than two miles away – as its clubhouse.

Club director Helen Todd said the long-term ambition has always been to bring the two facilities together, allowing the club to grow its membership base and generate additional income.

She told the Advertiser: “Our vision was initially a joint venture with Claires Court, which unfortunately didn’t come off.

“From then, we have just shy of 450 members and at the moment we are at Altwood School, which works perfectly well as a facility.

“But we have always had the vision that we wanted to have a clubhouse on site because that opens up so many other opportunities for us in the way of fundraising and being able to get additional revenue into the club for us to then reinvest for us to provide more and more hockey for a wider audience.”

Maidenhead Hockey Club's Men's 3s

Founded in 1904, the club originally played on grass pitches before the move to artificial surfaces.

Today, it has members aged from as young as five to 75 years old and hosts tournaments with which can bring more than 100 people to the pitches at Altwood School.

However, without a clubhouse next to the pitch, the club cannot easily provide food, drink or social facilities for events which Ms Todd said limits potential fundraising.

At the same time, the club faces growing competition from neighbouring hockey clubs that have more modern facilities in one place.

Ms Todd said: “With more competition of other clubs having better facilities than ours, it’s a bit of an ask sometimes for people to come and join us.

“I believe they join us because we are very much a family-friendly community club.”

She added that maintaining grassroots sport is becoming increasingly difficult without new income streams.

“We hope we’re not going to disappear, but without the opportunity to do active fundraising and get additional revenues in, it does become increasingly harder as a grassroots sport,” she said.

The club had previously been involved in proposals linked to a new campus for Claires Court School in Cox Green, which would have included a combined clubhouse and hockey pitches.

However, the plans were rejected by the Royal Borough amid concerns from residents.

In a letter published in the Advertiser’s Viewpoint section last week, Claires Court principal James Wilding suggested the club might consider using facilities at Maidenhead Golf Club.

Ms Todd welcomed the suggestion and thanked Mr Wilding for ‘raising the vision of our hockey club to have a clubhouse and pitch side by side’.

She said the ambition remained unchanged.

“It has always been a desire for us to have facilities that befit a community club of our size, catering for members of all ages and reflecting what most other hockey clubs in our area have,” she said.

“We are always, as a club, open to any suggestions that come through either from the borough or from any of the new developments going on in the area.”