A cricket pavilion reduced to ashes is being rebuilt with something bigger in mind than bricks and timber. For Heathcoat Cricket Club, the long road back has become a chance to remove barriers, give women and girls facilities designed properly for them and create a home for the next generation of players. Nearly two years after fire destroyed its clubhouse, the club is now pushing to close a funding gap created not simply by replacing what was lost, but by choosing to come back with a bigger and more inclusive building.
The new pavilion at Knightshayes, near Tiverton, will be around 16% larger than its predecessor, with two additional changing rooms forming an important part of the plans. The overall rebuild is costing around £1 million and, while the club was insured, it needs to find between £75,000 and £100,000 towards the cost of making the replacement pavilion larger. Around £16,000 has already been raised through its GoFundMe campaign, but Heathcoat Cricket Club’s Chris Salter says there is a much bigger story behind the fundraising.
Chris Salter (Image: Heathcoat Cricket Club)
Chris said: “The reason we need to fundraise is because we have made the pavilion bigger to accommodate ladies’ changing rooms. Beforehand, it was just the two changing rooms at either end of the pavilion, but now we have got an extra two changing rooms, which means female players on both sides can have their own facilities rather than everybody having to change in one place. The pavilion is larger and that gap is something we have to pay for ourselves.”
That decision has meant a longer journey through
That decision has meant a longer journey through planning and negotiations with the National Trust, which owns the Knightshayes estate where Heathcoat plays. It has also left the club with more money to find, but Chris believes the extra time and expense are justified by the opportunity to make cricket more accessible. Rather than simply recreating the pavilion that existed before the fire, the club wants the new building to reflect how the game itself is changing.
Chris added: “If it was not for us wanting to bring the pavilion up to modern-day standards and acknowledge the rise of ladies wanting to play cricket, this thing would have been built by now. We would not have had to fundraise and we would not have had the longer planning process to negotiate a larger pavilion. But that is the bottom line as to why we are doing it.”
The fire at Heathcoat Cricket Club (Image: Heathcoat Cricket Club)
Women’s cricket is already part of life at Heathcoat, although its different sections have experienced contrasting fortunes. The club has tried again this season to establish its women’s hardball side in the Devon Women’s Cricket League, but a shortage of players and support has meant a number of fixtures have had to be conceded. Its women’s softball side, by contrast, has become an established part of the club, led by Rob Venn and captain Kayleigh Parkes, and plays a number of competitive fixtures each year.
For Chris, growing that section is as much
For Chris, growing that section is as much about challenging perceptions as providing somewhere to play. Heathcoat’s club development plan includes the ambitious aim of increasing women’s membership by 50% a year, while its wider playing membership, including juniors, stands at around 325. The hope is that better facilities can help convince more women that cricket is a sport they can walk into without years of previous experience.
Chris said: “There is perhaps a perception for ladies getting into cricket that they have to be good from the start, but it does not matter. You can be someone who has never thrown a cricket ball or a softball in your life, or you can be incredibly fit and active. There is a place in softball or hardball cricket where you can find friendship, activity and be part of something, and we want to do that at Heathcoat.”
There is another challenge too. Heathcoat’s girls’ teams are thriving, but the club wants to create a clearer path between junior cricket and the senior game, allowing teenage girls to continue playing rather than reaching an age when the route ahead becomes less obvious. Chris says other larger clubs across Devon already have women and girls playing in their senior sides, something Heathcoat wants to emulate.
The young women’s team at Heathcoat Cricket Club (Image: Heathcoat Cricket Club)
He added: Our girls’ teams are doing exceptionally
He added: “Our girls’ teams are doing exceptionally well, but it is about breaking those barriers down and making the transition between junior girls playing under-15 cricket and playing senior cricket. We have not quite worked out how to bridge that gap yet. Part of that, we are hoping, is the new pavilion and the better facilities.”
Something as straightforward as where somebody gets changed can matter. A teenage girl considering senior cricket may be stepping into a side containing adult men, and Chris believes the club has a responsibility to make that transition as comfortable as possible. Separate facilities cannot solve every challenge around participation, but they can remove one obvious obstacle.
He said: “If one of the barriers is, ‘I do not feel part of a team, I do not know where I can get changed, I do not feel comfortable changing in a changing room full of adult males’, then now we can break that barrier down. We want to ensure they have everything they could possibly need to want to play cricket. That is our starting point.”
The changes will also benefit visiting players
The changes will also benefit visiting players. Heathcoat stages more than 100 fixtures a year at Knightshayes and, as women and girls become increasingly common in mixed teams, the club expects players from across Devon to use the facilities. Chris says the aim is for everyone arriving at the ground to have the same sense that the pavilion has been designed with them in mind.
Construction of the new pavilion (Image: Heathcoat Cricket Club)
He added: “Anyone playing for Heathcoat Cricket Club, or one of the numerous visitors to Heathcoat Cricket Club, will have a better experience because they will have their own dedicated changing rooms. There is a rise in ladies’ cricket and a lot of teams bring ladies and girls as part of their mixed teams. It will just make the entire environment better for people coming along.”
The reason any rebuilding was necessary came in the early hours of Friday, August 16, 2024, when fire tore through Heathcoat’s pavilion. Firefighters were called shortly after 5.20am and the clubhouse was destroyed. Chris remembers receiving a message from club chairman Dean Edwards at around 6am containing a photograph of the scene and struggling at first to comprehend what he was looking at.
Chris said: It was a pretty rough day
Chris said: “It was a pretty rough day. I received a WhatsApp at around six from Dean Edwards, our chairman, with a photograph, which at first I thought was AI. It was difficult to comprehend.”
The loss soon revealed just how much more the pavilion represented to the people who had passed through its doors. Cricket at Knightshayes has been woven into the life of generations of families, and in the aftermath people began sharing memories of matches, relatives and moments associated with the ground. For the club, those stories reinforced the determination not only to rebuild, but to create somewhere capable of collecting another generation of them.
Chris added: “It was not really until the fire that we realised how much that building and that place meant to so many families across Tiverton. People came with their stories of what they remembered happening there and their family connections to it. We realised very early on how much the place meant to people, which is why it was so important that, when we rebuilt it, we built a pavilion people would want to go to and which would continue to build memories for people across Tiverton and mid Devon.”
What happened next has become almost as important
What happened next has become almost as important to the club’s story as the fire itself. The following morning around 100 people gathered to clear the ground, walking across the outfield metre by metre to collect debris that had been scattered across it. By that afternoon, Heathcoat was playing first-team cricket again.
Chris said: “The fire was on the Friday and we played cricket at Knightshayes the day after. We had around 100 people there on the Saturday morning clearing the outfield, walking metre by metre because this place had been blown apart and there were parts of the pavilion on the other side of the outfield. Then we played first-team cricket that afternoon.”
Cricket has not stopped since. Temporary facilities, including marquees, toilets and other infrastructure, allowed Heathcoat to continue through the 2025 season and have returned again this year while construction continues. They have done their job, although Chris admits enthusiasm for life under canvas is now running thin.
He added: At no point have we stopped
He added: “At no point have we stopped. Last year we had our temporary facilities in place, with our marquee and toilets, and they have returned this year. There is now absolute marquee fatigue. We cannot wait to get out of that and get back into our pavilion.”
The women’s cricket team is going from strength to strength (Image: Heathcoat Cricket Club)
Remarkably, participation has continued to grow while the club has been living with its temporary home. Heathcoat’s All Stars programme for children aged four to eight sold out for the first time this year, with more than 100 youngsters turning up for Friday night cricket and a waiting list of more than 20. For a club whose committee has spent much of the past two years thinking about architects, insurers, planners and rebuilding costs, that growth offers a reminder of why the work matters.
Chris said: “If anything, our membership has grown while we have gone through this difficult period. That puts us in a brilliant position where we can say, ‘Look how well we did over the last two years, now come and look at us with our new facilities.’ It gives us that stability and the ability then to focus on cricket again.”
Keeping everything going has depended heavily
Keeping everything going has depended heavily on the community around the club. Chris says members, parents, sponsors and businesses have helped financially and practically, from the people who arrived for the initial clean-up to those able to provide diggers, tractors, skips and Portaloos when they were needed. The bill for temporary arrangements across the rebuilding period has, he estimates, nudged towards £50,000, making that practical assistance particularly valuable even with insurance in place.
Chris added: “We have received incredible support from community members, parents, interested parties and local businesses. We have relied heavily on our brilliant network of sponsors around Tiverton, who have continued to provide us with what we need when we need it. We could not have done it without them.”
Now the focus is turning towards one final fundraising push. Heathcoat is taking part in the Toyota Good For Cricket Prize Draw, which allows supporters to buy entries while directing 100% of their ticket purchase to their chosen cricket club. The 2026 draw closes on Wednesday, September 30, and prizes include cars, cricket experiences, hospitality packages, signed kit and gift cards.
Chris said: We want to use
Chris said: “We want to use it as an opportunity to reignite our last little bit of fundraising. We receive 100% of the donations through the platform and people who support the club then get entered into prize draws where they can win cricket-related experiences, kit, cars, gift cards and lots of different prizes. We have not utilised it fully yet this year, but over these last weeks we really want to relaunch it and help get us towards our fundraising target.”
The initiative has already proved its worth nationally. More than 700 clubs took part in its first year in 2025, collectively raising more than £290,000, and Heathcoat hopes its own campaign can help bridge the remaining gap without forcing the club to rely more heavily on borrowing. For Chris, however, every pound raised comes back to the same objective: creating a cricket club where more people feel able to take part.
He added: “We want to use it for our own efforts to rebuild the pavilion, to give the best facilities for anyone using the club and to grow our ladies’ membership. It is a great way to promote investment in grassroots sport. For ladies’ sport, we are doing this for increased participation and anyone can participate regardless of ability.”
Construction has been under way since around April
Construction has been under way since around April and the club hopes the pavilion will be completed by the end of the year, ahead of an official opening at the start of the 2027 cricket season. After two years in which volunteers have juggled full-time jobs, cricket and the demands of a major building project, the prospect of finally walking through the doors carries considerable emotion. Asked what that moment will mean, Chris’s first answer was succinct: “I would probably cry and then quit.”
But, he says, the real reward will not be the building itself. It will come later, when the changing rooms are occupied, the ground is busy and the countless hours spent rebuilding have disappeared behind the sound of another season taking place.
Chris added: “For everyone who is part of the club, it will be a significant and fundamental achievement to deliver this project. We are all volunteers and we all work full-time alongside our commitments to the cricket club. It is a labour of love, but we all love it.”
The main achievement will not be standing
“The main achievement will not be standing on the steps looking out when it is complete. It will be during the 2027 season and the years after that, when you can go up there on a Friday night for junior training, on a Saturday for senior cricket or on any other night of the week and see people playing cricket, getting out of their homes and playing sport in a fun, safe environment where everyone feels included. We can offer the best facilities to ensure people can play to the best of their ability and have fun. That will be the main achievement from rebuilding this.”
For a club that carried on playing within hours of losing its pavilion, simply returning to where it was was never quite enough. The new Heathcoat will look familiar, but behind its doors there will be more room, more choice and fewer reasons for somebody to feel cricket is not for them. Out of one of the club’s hardest days has come the opportunity to build a home intended to welcome more of Devon’s cricketers than ever before.
Source: www.midweekherald.co.uk
