Shipston Reserve

The name gives it away before anything else does: this ground sits on what was once a sand pit, worked out and eventually handed over for football and cricket rather than housing. Shipston Reserve in Cheltenham, on Crawford Street, carries that quarry history quietly.

Cricket has the longer claim here. Cheltenham Cricket Club traces its own history back to 1872, long before the reserve took the shape it has now, and the club still plays out of the two pitches on site alongside the winter football tenants. Bayside Argonauts FC calls it home for the football season.

The reserve's most recent chapter is administrative rather than sporting: Bayside City Council carried out a round of upgrades in 2024, replacing timber seating for spectators, improving accessible parking, and the sort of unglamorous work that keeps a community ground functional rather than one that makes headlines. That followed on from the 2013 pavilion project on the reserve's southern side, designed by Ardent Architects.

What isn't on record is when the sand pit first became a sports ground, or under whose authority that happened — the trail on that point runs cold. What's clear is that Shipston has settled into a dual identity, on a patch of Bayside turned over from industry to recreation.