Who is the BSG?

As the nominations roll in for this year’s BSG Sporting Excellence Awards, celebrating the best of what sport means to this town, it seems a good moment to ask a question many residents might not be able to answer: who exactly is the Charity behind it all?

So, who is the Berkhamsted Sports Grounds?

Picture Berkhamsted without Broadwater. No football on a Saturday morning, no tennis in the summer, no cricket on those long weekend afternoons. It nearly happened. A century ago, those grounds went up for sale and the clubs using them couldn’t afford to buy them back.

What saved them was, in the end, the town itself. In 1924, through the generosity of a major donor and an appeal to local residents, a new charity stepped in: the Berkhamsted Sports Grounds Charitable Association (BSG) was founded. The land was secured for the community, not for profit, not for developers.

That approach hasn’t really changed. BSG doesn’t run the clubs you turn out to watch or play for, it protects the ground beneath them. And in a town like Berkhamsted, that ground is where grassroots sport lives and breathes, where kids kick their first ball, where beginners find their game, and where communities are quietly built one match at a time.

Owning some of the town’s most-used pitches and courts, its job is simply to make sure local sport always has a home. When the town grew and space got tight, BSG adapted. In 1984 it sold part of Broadwater to fund the purchase of Kitchener’s Fields, giving cricket room to breathe and letting football put down more permanent roots. Same mission, different grounds.

Today, BSG supports its member clubs covering just about every sport the town plays, from football, cricket, tennis and squash, to hockey, rugby, golf, bowls and netball. And the family of sports in our town is still growing with Padel being added to the mix in summer 2025.

Nine clubs in total. Thousands of players, coaches, volunteers and supporters. One shared purpose: to make Berkhamsted and its surrounding villages a better place to live, through sport.

Beyond land ownership, BSG also provides grants to its member clubs and loans to other voluntary sports clubs in the town, quietly supporting growth behind the scenes, without much fanfare. The spotlight, as they’d put it themselves, belongs to the clubs, the people who play and Berkhamsted community.

So the next time you’re watching a match at Broadwater, standing at the boundary at Kitchener’s Fields, or knocking up at the tennis club, there’s a decent chance BSG had something to do with making that possible.

Most people just don’t know it yet.

And like so much in community sport, especially at grassroots level, BSG runs on goodwill as much as anything else. Grassroots sport doesn’t just happen; it takes people willing to show up, week after week, often unseen. Behind BSG and members clubs are volunteers who give up their time; quietly and consistently to make sure the clubs are run well and the grounds are looked after. ….. no volunteers, no BSG!… it really is that simple.

So that is the BSG: rooted in Berkhamsted, and in love with its sport and amazing community!

If you’d like to get involved with any of the clubs in any capacity, we’d love to hear from you. Drop an email to pr.bsgca@gmail.com and see where it takes you.

The West Indies & Berkhamsted CC teams in April 1928

The Sports Grounds at Broadwater in 1965