Vandals smash memorial benches on Stratford's Greenway
A STRATFORD widow has described the Greenway path on the edge of Stratford as a “no-go area” after a bench dedicated to her late husband’s memory was vandalised.
Lisa Geldard paid £450 for the bench two months after her husband Brian’s death from Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma at the age of 59 in March 2017.
The bench was installed to give those who sat on it a view of the finishing post of Stratford Racecourse, because Brian had been a jockey as a young man.
The damaged bench was swiftly removed by Warwickshire County Council to see if it could be repaired. But Lisa told the Herald she didn’t want to “throw good money after bad” by paying for repairs, or a new bench, just for it to be vandalised again on the Greenway.
Since Brian had played golf she was thinking of erecting any replacement bench on the Welcombe Hills, overlooking the golf course there.
Lisa told the Herald: “The nature of the Greenway has changed. There are now lots of hooligans and drug addicts there. I’ve even had two flashers. I’m not providing a bench for people to have sex on and take drugs. A lot of the benches are in a poor state.
“And there are also people there who don’t control their dogs.”
She added: “It’s becoming a bit of a no-go area. I’ll be throwing good money after bad if I spend several hundred pounds getting it repaired and the same thing happens again. It’s better to put it somewhere where it will be respected.”
Lisa said the bench has also been the target of air rifle practice, with pellets embedded in a metal photograph on the structure.
Lisa said Brian had wanted the bench at that location because of his early career as a jockey. He’d taken part in horse racing at courses throughout the country before having to retire following an accident that resulted in a broken thigh bone.
He later worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford for 11 years, first as a member of the stage crew and then as part of the front-of-house team.
Brian and Lisa met in 1990 at the pub in Stratford then known as the Slug and Lettuce but now called the Phoenix. Lisa was with a girlfriend at the time. And she has firm views on how men and women should meet when they have romance in mind.
“In those days you went into a pub with your mates,” she said. “There was none of this telling fibs on the internet!”
The man who informed Lisa of the damaged bench was Craig Earl, senior county council ranger for country parks in south Warwickshire.
He told the Herald: “It’s very disappointing to come across instances like this. They’re not ever so frequent, but you’re obviously at the mercy of people, aren’t you.”
The discovery was made during a routine bench safety inspection. Craig said that Lisa’s bench was one of two on the Greenway that had been damaged, out of a total along the five-mile stretch of 15 or more.
He said that her bench was repairable and specialists were working out what it would cost.
Whatever it costs, it’s unlikely that the bench, or its replacement, will find its way back to the Greenway.