Style and flair to spare

Style and flair to spare: Scott MacCallum speaks with Glenalmond College’s Head of Grounds Tim Holden, right, about how he uses his remarkable array of skills to enhance the environment of this amazing independent school.

Glenalmond College, halfway between Perth and Crieff in the glorious Perthshire countryside, is an amazing place. It is set in over 300 acres of ground, 240 of it maintained, while the range of sports catered for at the college is truly mouthwatering. As well as the usual rugby, football, cricket and hockey there is, among many others, the school’s own golf course, archery, mountain biking and bush crafts.

Managing the grounds, and such a diverse range of sports and pursuits, is a team of six, led by a man who is truly a Swiss Army Knife in human form.

Head of Grounds Tim Holden turns his hand to whatever is required, whether that be gritting the roads to allow access the school; maintaining all the vehicles and machinery to looking after all the thousands of trees on site thanks to his tree surgery qualification.

In addition, he is perfectly qualified to engrave the names on the school’s trophies or mend any of its clocks. Tim, you see, is a former qualified jeweller. Oh yes, add into that, should the college wish to add sailing to its sporting offering, you have the very man on site. Tim is a former national champion in the Javelin class.

Indeed, with Glenalmond College being landlocked, Tim would no doubt drive the minibus full of students to the marina as well.

But does Tim feel taken advantage of because his range of skills are more than fully ultilised and that he finds himself banking one salary for an output of three or four? Not a bit of it.

“Working here is fantastic. It is a glorious place and to be able to work in a setting as diverse as this is wonderful. We have kites, buzzards and deer. It is such a beautiful part of the country,” said the Mancunian, leaving us in no doubt that he doesn’t feel hard done by with the weight of his workload.

The College was actually founded by former UK Prime Minister William Gladstone in 1847, giving it a certain kudos from the start, but for many, its connection with Harry Potter is much more exciting.

Hogwarts’ Groundsman, Hagrid – in the shape of actor Robbie Coltrane – was an “OG”, that is to say a Glenalmond former pupil!

Glenalmond has shaped the futures of so many and it is easy to see why. The tranquil setting coupled with range of sporting opportunities make it a very special place.

“The boys play rugby from September to December and we have four dedicated pitches over that time including our first team pitch. In January, February and March they become lacrosse pitches for the girls. The boys play hockey from January through the March and the girls play hockey from September to December.

In other words we play hockey all the way through winter, it just swaps from boys to girls.,” explained Tim.

And that’s just rugby and hockey over the winter.

“In summer those pitches are swapped to athletics. We put down a 300 metre track and have a guy who comes in and marks it out for us. It would take us quite a long time but he comes in and does it in a day for us.”

The cricket, football and golf are played a little further away on the estate and could take a 400 metre track but logistically it is a little more inaccessible.

The wonderful rolling countryside of Perthshire is genuinely lovely, but not for sports pitches and many of the Glenalmond pitches have had to be levelled, some many many years ago.

“One of our pitches was created by digging up on one side and filling in the other and, on our cricket pitch, one side of it has completely different soil to the other.

“Earlier this year was when we had the MCC playing here and they had a cracking day, but it poured down in the evening and for the tournament the next day we had to pull the boundary in by five metres because there was a pool of water on one side from the overnight rain.”

What solutions are possible?

“You really have to live with the problem as you can’t really change it through the season. We can create secondary drainage to link to the primary and that is something we will look at, but it’s not really been an issue until the last 12 months when it hasn’t stopped raining. We’ve not had a week when it’s not rained since June last year.”

Being one of the most northerly premier educational establishments in the country does carry its issues and Tim has known times when there was snow a metre deep on the astro pitches. There is nothing to do but wait for the thaw in those circumstances as you can’t push 100 metres of snow to the back of the pitch when you only have five metres of space.

“We do have snow clearers. Living in a town the council comes round and clears it but not up here.

I do the surrounds and the roads to the college to enable students, teachers, food deliveries, medical etc. You have got to have access,” said Tim, who lives on site.

The golf course is nine holes with 18 tees, but don’t go thinking this is nothing more than an afterthought. It is a serious golf course as befits one designed by the great James Braid, who has Carnoustie, Gleneagles, Dalmahoy and Lundin Links included among his canon of work.

There can’t be too many students who have such a course at their beck and call but it does cause Tim and his team, with their fleet of machines logistical issues.

The weather does cause issues with the day-to-day maintenance schedules at the college.

“If the weather, or rather when the weather, causes problems it can knock out the scheduling of equipment and we can find that our triple mower or greens mower can be in the wrong place. To get from the 5th hole at the far end of the golf course to the other side of the estate is close to two miles so even getting people there and back is time consuming.

“We have the same mowers sharing different tasks around the site and if it’s wet we can miss our window for mowing certain areas and that can have a knock on effect and a big catch up to do. It can be quite awkward,” explained Tim.

“Sometimes we have to adapt and do the best job we can even if all we have access to is a different machine.

For example, the golf course and the cricket field is cut at 15 mil but if all we have is the roller deck mower we can cut at 20 mil, so at least we can get fairly close to what we need until we can get back with the correct mower for the task,” explained Tim, who is also the College mechanic.

Self-taught, he had a passion for mechanics harking back to the time when as a young boy he used to dismantle his dad’s lawnmower, usually just as he was about to put it to good use.

“I enjoy diagnosing the problems and finding out what needs to be done. The more you do the more you learn and I’ve built up a good range of tools. Most of our machines are second hand so warranties aren’t an issue and with me doing the work it saves massively in downtime as I can fix many problems in hours rather than machines being taken away to be repaired.”

The two latest additions to Glenalmond’s sporting portfolio is mountain biking and archery with brand new track for the former just completed at the end of May.

Believed to be the first bespoke mountain bike track at any school in the country it came as a result of the success of another OG. Charlie Aldridge recently won the World Under-23 Championship and he featured, strongly in the first two laps as it happens, in the remarkable Olympic race won by now double Olympic Champion Tom Pidcock.

Charlie eventually finished a very creditable eighth in the race but the Glenalmond track, which will soon be extended, will be something else for which he is known.

“The college has got to reflect modern day pursuits and mountain biking is not something which we would have considered 20 years ago but is now firmly established as an Olympic sport,” said Tim, who added that the guy who teaches the mountain biking is the same one who teaches bush craft and survival skills.

“It is very popular with the summer camps and the scouts who visit. It’s very Bear Grylls.”

Tim arrived at the college nine years ago having moved to Scotland from initially Manchester, but latterly Whaley Bridge, in Derbyshire, where he had his own jewellery business, hence his engraving and clock repairing expertise. Looking for a complete change, once arriving north of the border he trained to be a tree surgeon and worked in the capacity for six or seven years before applying for the job at Glenalmond.

Initially appointed Deputy Head of Grounds he took on the main role within a year and hasn’t looked back since.

“The challenges of the job can provide us with variation, even if they do cause headaches. It’s never dull. With such a big area to maintain there is a vast variety of tasks to do whether than be pulling out weeds to carrying out major tree work and everything in between.

“We usually lose one or two trees a year but when Storm Arwen came through we lost something in the region of 250 and we’ve still not been able to get to every one of those.

It’s a mammoth task,” said Tim, but again the college is lucky in having a qualified tree surgeon to carry out the work safely and professionally.

“We’ve got amenity areas, woodland areas, we’ve got the bike track and all the different sports in play which are so different. That is one of the main attractions of the job for me,” explained Tim, who was Javelin Class National Sailing Champion in 1998 and who still sails as a hobby, but now in a larger boat.

He is indebted to his small but hard-working team.

“The team is fantastic and all work really hard and I really appreciate the work that they do and the effort they put in. When you think about it with holidays we are only really working with five people for most of the year,” said Tim, who has recently returned to work after a knee replacement.

With that human Swiss Army Knife leading them, the Glenalmond College grounds team will continue to make the most of every minute of every day to ensure the estate remains as spectacular as ever.