Meet Steve Lowe, Volunteer Coordinator at Cresswell Pele Tower.
Steve shares his journey from nursing into environmental work, archaeology and community volunteering, and how those experiences have shaped the way he works with people today. He reflects on the restoration and reopening of the 14th-century Cresswell Pele Tower, and why it remains an important place for the local community.
Through activities such as living history groups, gardening sessions, events and guided tours, the Pele Tower has become a valued community space for Cresswell and the surrounding area. It is a place where people can spend time together, learn at their own pace and feel part of something welcoming and established.
This interview was transcribed from audio. Minor edits have been made for clarity and consistency, while keeping Steve’s words and meaning unchanged.
For anyone who may not know the site, how would you describe Pele Tower and why it remains important to the local community today?
Cresswell Pele Tower is a 14th century building which until six, seven years ago was a ruin. It’s now been restored, we’ve got a roof on and it’s available to the public. Before that it was private land, you couldn’t get in and no one could access it, so that’s brought a building back to life. It’s also a schedule one ancient monument where it’s nationally important so you know that’s another thing from our point of view because we’ve rescued it from destruction. We’ve also restored the garden that was with it and that garden is a place where people can come and they can enjoy the solitude and the colour. We also can use it for event space for music.
In fact, I think one of the really good things last year, we had open mic sessions in the garden and people were just turning up, in fact they were queuing around the busking, it was brilliant and it’s sort of put us on that map as well. So there’s lots of reasons why people might want to come in terms of its community. It is a place that people value and people want to come. It’s a safe space as well. It might sound a strange thing to say, but as Volunteer Coordinator, if I have volunteers that come along and do nothing, that’s fine because they’re actually socialising and that’s equally important because a lot of people are isolated, so having the opportunity to work with other people is really important and you make friends as well.
We had a volunteer party just before Christmas. 40 people turned up. It’s just a nice little thank you back to the volunteers.
Could you tell us a bit about your background and what led you to work at Cresswell Pele Tower?
I started life as a nurse, but my great desire was to work outdoors. So I ended up doing a degree in Environmental Studies at Sunderland. I then moved on to work for the government in nature conservation and once I left that job, I was working for wildlife trusts for basically the rest of my working life. When I decided to pack in there, I’d already had an interest in archaeology and history. I worked with volunteers in addition, and the job that came up at the Pele Tower needed somebody who had a background in archaeology, history, volunteering and also environment. So, I was an ideal candidate.
I think I might have been the only person that applied for the job, to be honest with you, but I got it anyway. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it ever since.
I met Barry Mead, MBE before that through archaeological digs. I got on really well with Barry. I’d already undertaken a couple of archaeological digs, which were done as part of the Pele Tower restoration. I was a volunteer on those. And in fact, the day that I handed my notice in, I was actually volunteering at the Pele Tower on an archaeological dig. It just so happened that the guy who was supervising offered me a job on the same day. So I went off to do archaeology for a year down south and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was brilliant. A big, steep learning curve for me, because I wasn’t a professional at that time, but I like to think I am more professional now. I’m a bit of a sponge. If someone tells me something, it sticks, particularly if it’s a weird fact.
How did your early experiences with volunteering and archaeology shape the direction of your career?
I do find that things come in and then I’m able to reuse them at another time. I’d be a perfect quiz partner, I think. Archaeology, wildlife and the history stuff, it’s more than a job, it’s quite a passion. So you do tend to find yourself dipping your toes in things all of the time, and I do all sorts of other things, as you probably know, I work offshore, on whale and dolphin research, and I’m a member of the Northumberland Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority (NIFCA), which is a statutory authority. So I’m a government appointee on things like that.
With unpaid jobs, I like to keep myself busy and they’re important, and it also stretches me.
How have your different interests and experiences shaped the way you approach community work?
When I started to get involved in the marine environment, I had very little background in that really, I had enough, but now I would consider myself to be a lot more versed in that sort of thing, and they all overlap. With networking, I think that’s really important, it’s not so much who you know, it’s making a relationship with people, and not being afraid to make a suggestion. I like to think that at the Pele Tower, we’re up front, we would say, “if you want to come along and help us, we’re here, how can we help you help us?” If you don’t like it, that’s fine. You’ll find something else that does. We always find a niche for people.
NCVA has worked with us, so they know exactly what it’s like, we do try to embrace all sorts and provide opportunities, some things we try don’t work. But the Pele Tower has been massively successful in the last couple of years in particular.
What kinds of events and activities have helped bring the local community together at Pele Tower?
We had one event last September, which was a World War Two reenactment event, which involved the whole village, and we had the bells ringing from the Church and everything like that. And the Germans invaded and we fought them off. We had nearly 900 people at that event, too many in many respects because it causes us problems with things like car parking but it shows how valuable it is. And then you can go to the other extreme where I have a gardening group that comes around for a tour, it might only be half a dozen of them. And they get a bit spooked one-to-one on a tour with myself and Barry or other people. But everyone goes away with a smile on their face or they’ve learned something and they’ve enjoyed it. And that includes young people.
Have you seen the site make a difference to young people or quieter members of the community?
In fact, if anything last year, the most successful thing for us was actually something for the young people. We don’t get hundreds of them, don’t get me wrong, but we’d love for more. One example is, we’ve got a group that have a couple of kids who are home educated, and they have taken on one of the plots, and they’ve developed their own little garden, which is all about Elizabethan herbs, so it’s all linked to what we do. Last year someone joined in who’s very quiet and very shy, but she led one of our events last year and she was fantastic. I’ve actually seen how much of a difference she’s shown in confidence. None of that was due to the pressure from anybody, she offered to do it and she did it herself. We helped her with that and gave her space, and it’s fantastic.
What challenges come with running the site, especially with limited funding and staff time?
There’s been some brilliant outcomes and doing the activities for a couple of years just seeing how good the results are and also building confidence. We obviously have a limit in terms of numbers of people we can accommodate for, and we’ve got no income so we only survive on what comes in when people make a donation on the day when they visit. We can do other fundraising as well but that’s generally the income we’ve got, and there’s only me, I’m the volunteer coordinator, I only work 10 hours a week. In between times if people are getting in touch with us I’m still answer their calls, I don’t like to leave people on a limb, I like to try and provide whatever it is they need, and that can range from a guided tour, it can be people making a donation of plants. We’ve had ghost hunters, filmmakers and we had a school last year that did a did their own story about the white lady; our resident ghost, and that’s now available online. We do a podcast and a blog and all sorts of different things, so there’s loads going on.
What does being part of the local community mean to you personally?
I don’t live in the village or near the village, but I feel part of the village. I think everybody that we’ve got, with so many people now involved, it’s a community project, it’s bedded in the community and it’s not just somewhere that people go, it’s somewhere that people want to go, and they want to come back. Of course that includes loads of people who are here on holiday, there are two caravan parks so they’ll spend the summer. What are we going to do for the summer? Let’s give it back a little bit and play with swords, which we’ve been doing today.
What inspired you to take on the role of Volunteer Coordinator, and what does that role involve day to day?
It’s a job that is flexible which is great, I’ve got a certain minimum number of hours and I like the fact that I can work other things around it because I also until recently worked for the Northumberland Rivers Trust. I do voluntary work, I do stuff with the Northumberland fisheries etc. I like to be busy, that’s a key thing, but as a role I can’t say I’m in charge because I’ve got trustees who look after what we’re doing, but I can drive it the way that I feel it needs to go, so if we for instance, set up a living history group because it’s something I was interested in and other people have come forward and said they would like to do it, so we’ve now got a group of people in the bothy each day, which is one of our public spaces and they’re making clothing so they can dress up as Vikings and Saxons or portray World War II.
We’ve had to double the amount of storage space we’ve got because people are starting to acquire things that help us with those sort of interpretive measures so it’s living history. It’s bringing it to life and you never know what you’re going to walk into. It’s dynamic and it’s lovely, it’s just the fact that people come forward with ideas and you can help facilitate those ideas, like the restoration of a Sperm Whale. We’ve got all sorts of stories that happen and people bring things to us. We and they don’t know what they are.
There’s so much going on, I mean this year we’re actually going to be open more on weekends because I’ve got more people to help now as we can’t open unless we’ve got volunteers, because health and safety means we’ll have to have people in the tower just because it is steep. I’m doing a video at the moment so that anyone who has accessibility problems can actually see the rest of the tower without having to climb the stairs. It’s a logical step and then we can also look at interpretation for people who are visually or audibly impaired and do whatever we can to help on that as well if we possibly can.
How do volunteers support the care and promotion of Pele Tower, and what skills or qualities do you value most in the people who give their time here?
Volunteers help us in so many different ways. It’s really hard to pinpoint. Some people have just come along and their labour is their contribution. We’ve got other people who support us in terms of things like health and safety or education. The key thing for me is to make sure that people feel valued and that they’ve got a role that’s defined. We can have some flexibility in that but also ensuring that people are put to the right jobs. There’s no point in putting somebody who’s physically unable to do something on a job that requires it, although we’re keen to push people, we’re not keen to push them that hard. If someone comes forward and they’ve got an interest, we’ll find a way of harnessing that interest to their advantage, not to ours.
A lot of people come along and they’ve got an idea on what they want to do, and then you’ll have some people who’ve got more time and they’ll come and they’ll do more or they’ll develop a new role and not all of the roles have to be at the Pele Tower.
Why is preserving local history and stories such an important part of your work at the Pele Tower?
I’m particularly interested in doing work on an archive, we’ve got reference material relating to the Cresswell site but also the Cresswell family and there’s a number of stories there, but we’ve started to set up a local history section in both these spaces, so we’ve got loads of books about the local area, not just about Cresswell, but about the north east, effectively we’ve got a northeast gallery and that includes maps, photographs and stories and some of these books that we’ve got are almost unique. There’s one book, it’s only one or two copies of them and we’ve got them there and we work very closely with Woodhorn Museum at the archives as well, so anything that we do get, if it’s too sensitive for us to keep it, we’ll pass it on to Woodhorn and have a copy of it.
We’ve got loads of 18th century drawings and pictures for instance that were done by the Cresswells; this had been in someone’s loft for his lifetime and because we were working with his sister, who was a writer and she’s a member of the Cresswell family, we promoted her book which is about Cresswell, and we got to know them and we got them to work together on research and stuff like that, and the next thing we know this fantastic repository of information that has been made available to us because it’s sitting getting mouldy in someone’s loft and they decided they wanted to share it, so rather than that being locked up with us we’re making sure that that’s going to the archive so it’s available to anyone who wants to look at it so it builds a story. It’s not just the tower it builds the whole story because it just transports you back, there’s loads and loads of stories that the Cresswell story influenced.
It can be quite exciting, one of the Cresswell family made a massive difference in World War II by capturing the enigma machine which shortened the war by 12 months or so and saved hundreds if not thousands or possibly even a million lives, nobody knows about that story so we’ve got a story to tell, we’ve got something of a local hero to promote and it all fits in and it gives us an excuse to dress up as well.
What difference has working with NCVA, particularly the weekly gardening group, made to the site and to volunteer involvement more widely?
It’s been brilliant working with NCVA, not just because of the volunteers that come via NCVA and supporting volunteers etc. but just the networking opportunities. I think we get out of an organisation and a partnership with an organisation what you put in, and I always like to think we’ve been supportive of others as well. With working with NCVA, we’ve had the benefit of advice and support, a window on opportunities as well but also bringing in other partners, I think that’s really, really important. Sometimes partners come to see what we’re doing because they think we’re doing something that they would like to copy and sometimes we do the same thing, but there’s no one size fits all, that’s the thing, and every organisation is totally different. So the way that you approach things might be guided by something that someone else has done, but you’ll end up with your own version. That’s been really important and having an office that is really local to us as well, which is very handy. We’ve worked with the staff and the volunteers here.
Fairly recently one of the events that I was involved with which NCVA supported was a tree planting event which I did under the auspices of the Pele Tower this time because the Northumberland Rivers Trust role had disappeared, but we still have that continuity. Continuity is really important, and I think the one thing that always frustrates me about everything we do in our sector is that lack of continuity. It’s that somebody might not be there in 12 months’ time because funding is only 12 months or something like that. It’s the same for us in what we do. We’ve been very fortunate because my role is the only one that requires a staff role, and we’ve been able to secure that for the long term, but the short term we’ve got a guarantee of a certain amount of money that’s coming in every year which goes towards my role and without that role we wouldn’t be able to do any of these things. It’s all about long-term planning and that’s where your trustees come in as well, so that support from NCVA on Trustees is also really valuable as well.
Have you seen any examples of how volunteering has benefited individuals, whether through confidence, skills or connection?
One example is that we had a volunteer who came along who might have fitted into one of the support groups that NCVA brings along, but actually came under his own steam, and was just lacking confidence, and after a few months of working with us he got onto a role at Kirkley Hall College and the agricultural college. He won an award last year for the work he was doing at Kirkley and it looks like he’s been setting up his own business as well, so that’s a really good example of how somebody who had gone right through that.
I had a lady who had just recently become bereaved, she just happened to be walking past one day and she has honestly been one of the best volunteers we’ve had. She comes and it’s given her a totally different new life. She’s really fully committed, it’s brilliant, and her family came along to see us and said “mam would have been in a totally different place if she hadn’t found you guys.”
Last year, I was assaulted outside the Pele Tower and it was interesting because the Police Officer who came to interview me told me that his brother was one of our volunteers and that was the the only reason he got out of bed in the morning; to come to volunteer with us. That was really important. I didn’t care about myself, I thought “that’s real justification for what we’re doing,” because somebody valued what we were doing so much that they got out of bed in the morning to do it. For a lot of kids, particularly young people, and I know a lot of young people that are against working with older people, but actually you can’t beat it.
There’s also an assumption that somebody new in an area is starting from scratch and actually somebody new in one area may have more skills than some of the people that you’ve got already. They’ve got the talent and they just need the opportunity sometimes.
Looking ahead, what are your hopes for the future of Pele Tower and volunteering at the site?
We’d like to build on the successes we’ve had so far, consolidate those and maintain the standard of what we’re doing, but also I’d like to have a few more partnership opportunities as well. We don’t want to get so big that we can’t do what we’re doing and that’s not the intention, but we’d love to do more of the similar things, the events, the open days. We’d love to be open a little bit more frequently if we could. It’s all about people, about staff being volunteers, it’s about feet on the ground and we’d like to be a sustainable organisation in many different ways, not just about the finances but also about promoting sustainability.
For instance, we run composting courses, and we’d like to share them with other people and get people coming in and using us as a hub, to see the building that we’ve got. We’ve got a garden, the Pele Tower, and a Bothy. The Bothy is now almost in use five days a week. We’d like to see that used more so it becomes a community asset. It’s all got to be sustainable of course, so more of the same and a bit more on top. It’s about growing, but growing in a way that you can manage rather than going boom or bust. Boom or bust doesn’t work for anybody and the last thing we want is having loads of people engaged in what we do, and then them being let down and the work no longer there, because I have worked with a number of organisations in the past where that has been exactly the case. The volunteers, who actually are the main stay of the organisation, get totally overlooked. In fact, I volunteer in a place myself where I feel volunteers need more voice, and that’s what we like, where volunteers have more voice.
How do you make sure people feel comfortable getting involved, especially if they’re unsure at first?
I’ve got a rationale of where we are. If somebody comes in and it doesn’t suit them, they’ll disappear, which is entirely fine and understandable. But for most people, we try to find out what they enjoy doing and can also commit to. There’s no point in putting something on if someone can’t make the day.
Communications nowadays should be so much easier, but sometimes social media makes it harder for people to engage, so one-to-one is still the thing for me. If someone wants to come, come and have a chat, a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit.
You can read more about Steve and Cresswell Pele Tower at: https://cresswellpeletower.org.uk/