The home ground project: building a home for the club
A project over 40 years in the making. Why a club of 39 teams and 500 members is building a proper home at Bilsdon Park.
Hessle Rangers has started a project more than 40 years in the making: building a proper home base. Formed in 1976, the club now has 39 teams and well over 500 members, boys, girls, men and women.
A home the club can maintain and invest in will keep us sustainable and let us grow further, so people of all ages and abilities can play football competitively or just for fun. The home of Hessle Rangers will be a place for fun and healthy activity, for the local community and the wider area.
Why we need this
Our facilities have not kept pace with our growth, especially the huge strides in girls' football. To look after our players, coaches, volunteers, referees and spectators, we have one toilet cabin with a single female toilet, no changing facilities, a temporary kitchen, and we have to hold meetings in a local pub. For the wellbeing of the children and the long-term future of the club, we need to build a space where our players can thrive and our community can come together.
We have already raised more than £80,000 through fundraising events. Some of that has gone towards two of our three main plans for the site, and towards planning documents and the planning application. Every penny raised goes into our development bank account and is used entirely to fund the building.
Our plans for the site
A pavilion with changing rooms for players and officials, toilets, meeting and learning spaces, and the ability to cater for everyone using the site. Planning permission has already been granted.
A secure perimeter to create a safe environment for everyone using the pitches and pavilion. Completed in summer 2022.
Turning the existing sports hall into a modern indoor sports facility for the club's teams, members and the wider community. Completed in autumn 2021.
A community asset
Hessle Rangers is the long-term leaseholder of the designated sports pitches on the site of the former Hessle High Lower School. The site hosts hundreds of games and hundreds of hours of training and other activity every year. It delivers healthy activity to everyone from the four-year-olds at our First Touch sessions to the over-50s at Ladies walking football, and it is open to people of all races, nationalities and backgrounds.
The club is part of the community, taking part in things like the Christmas lights switch-on and Hessle Feast. Our facilities are used by St Anne's School and their children with disabilities, and have hosted holiday camps for children on free school meals run by Ballers Academy and First Step Sports, football camps by Hull City Ladies and Humber Hotshots, and a local ladies walking netball team. The new building will let us open up to even more community groups for meetings, education and exercise.
Our partners
We are working with East Riding of Yorkshire County Council, the East Riding County Football Association, the Football Foundation and St Anne's School to deliver this project.
How you can help
Personal donations, big or small, help us enormously. You can donate through our Just Giving page at justgiving.com/crowdfunding/hessle-rangers, share the crowdfunder with anyone who might help, and support our fundraising events. To sponsor or talk about funding, use our contact form.
Our Game. Our Pride. Our Future.