Inside the volunteer group behind Hindley's award-winning train station
"It's wonderful. Age and ability doesn't matter - it's all about putting your heart in."
I’m currently shovelling woodchip, from the earth at the sides of the local train station, to an empty bag once home to corn, and into the wheelbarrow below me. When I’m done, I’ll mulch the lavender and shrub beds, before pulling weeds and raking leaves which have wormed their way through the muddied gaps along the station’s backdoor cobblestone pathway.
For the Friends of Hindley Station, a long-standing station adoption group devoted to the upkeep and enhancement of the otherwise unassuming railway halt, today is just like any other. It’s another day in the fresh outdoors, clad in obscenely reflective orange vests, stick-for-grip black-and-red safety gloves, and locally sourced gardening tools on perpetual loan from yesteryear’s crop of doers.
The soil is beginning to dampen, and the flowers are at the mercy of the frost. The all-consuming air of clouded grey skies has enveloped the humble township of Hindley. It feels as though Sheila Davidson, the group’s lead volunteer, wouldn’t have it any other way:
“It’s all very peaceful down here. It’s a haven,” she tells me, between the scraping of her gloves against the leaf-littered cobbles.
“It’s just great. You get the activity, the socialisation, the fresh air. It’s great for your mental health too.”
A self-proclaimed ‘serial volunteer’, Hindley is home to Davidson; she’s always trying to help out where she can. She began the group 18 years ago, and has helped develop a once anonymous railway station in the obscure folds of the Wigan Borough into an eclectic blend of artistic endeavour and sustainable local resourcefulness, all against a spirited community backdrop.
“It’s about working with the whole community really,” she started.
“People see you looking after it, so they look after it and take an interest. People have brought in all sorts of stuff; plants, materials, food. And everything we get, we reuse; it’s all about being sustainable in what we’re doing.”
The Friends of Hindley Station is a volunteer group empowered by the Community Rail Network, a grassroots initiative made up of 75 community rail partnerships, 1,300 station volunteer groups, and other community-led initiatives across Britain. They work closely with Thrive CIC, a care provider for adults with learning disabilities in the Hindley area, and receive support from Northern Rail, alongside Community Rail themselves.
Jools Townsend, chief executive of Community Rail Network, feels that the network carries an obligation to uplift the communities associated with rail transport.
She said: “Community rail creates pride in place and pride in the railway, celebrating and strengthening the role of railways and stations in community life.
“Events, creative projects, and campaigns tap into local enthusiasm, stories, histories, and culture, building positive relationships with the railways and sustainable travel.”
Community Rail estimate that more than 8,250 volunteers give around 380,000 hours of their time each year, worth £30.9million in social value. The work of station adoption groups, such as the Friends of Hindley Station, is revolutionising local communities across the country.
“Volunteers’ activities turn stations such as Hindley into thriving community hubs, bringing people together with rail as a focal point,” Townsend added.
In 2019, Friends of Hindley Station won Platinum in the ‘It’s Your Station’ award, a Community Rail award which recognises the ‘hard-working people who maintain station gardens, displays, and the station environment, on a voluntary basis’. Since then, the station has earned consecutive annual recognition from the Royal Horticultural Society as a Level 5 ‘Outstanding’ example of floral display and gardening.
Karen Buckels, a local artist and volunteer with the Friends of Hindley Station, speaks with a delicate tone – to begin with. For her, volunteering has been a 25-year love affair which she says is all about ‘heart’:
She said: “It’s wonderful. Age and ability doesn’t matter – it’s all about putting your heart in.
“It’s just being out in the fresh air, going back to nature – giving back to your community,” she added, raking leaves from the earth for which she feels such pride.
Karen joined the volunteer group following a hip replacement, which left her stuck in her home at Wigan’s Haigh Hall – where she worked for 25 years as the park’s artist-in-residence. She suffered from depression, and found herself unable to care for the garden she’d once been inseparable from.
Sheila, alongside her husband Sandy, began helping her trim the bushes & pull the weeds, before inviting her to help at the station. The group has offered her a new route into life.
“I’m 81, and I’ll never stop,” she began, a sudden injection of joy in her affectation.
“You can’t stop doing what you love. Just talking to you now, I feel at peace and harmony with the universe. At every moment, I’m living.”
Karen has always been artistically inclined. She describes to me her experiences as a teacher, striving to offer youth a different perspective on education.
“Everything is art, and everything can be taught artistically,” she insists.
“I truly believe so; through visual, through art and through nature, the station is one big art installation.”
Next week, Karen may shovel woodchip, from the earth at the sides of the local train station, to an empty bag once home to corn, and into the wheelbarrow below her. She may mulch the lavender and shrub beds. She may pull weeds and rake the leaves that might worm through the muddied gaps along the station’s backdoor cobblestone pathway.
Whatever she does, to her and her fellow volunteers, it will be art.