I went to see Hull’s £50k ‘levelling up’ chess tables – where no one would play with me

Pearson Park, 11am. A duck paddles furiously across the serpentine lake as a youngster does a wheelie along a path on his bike. Grans buy ice creams for toddlers and a man exerts himself in the outdoor gym. Everywhere in this green space in Hull, Yorkshire, is awash with activity. Everywhere except the 64 black and white squares before me. “Will you play chess with me?” I call to a 50-something man, who shakes his head and scurries past.

Nor will the 30-something couple who say they don’t speak English – “It doesn’t matter!” I assure them as they walk off – or Helen Green, 55, an activities organiser who’s brought a group from her local day centre here to make the most of the sunshine. “I know how to play draughts [but] I can’t play chess to save my life, sorry,” she says.

Green hadn’t noticed the eye-wateringly expensive stone chess board and accompanying chairs installed by Hull City Council almost two months ago: “I didn’t know it was there until you pointed it out to me.” Oh dear.

The council was one of 85 local authorities to receive money from the £9 million Levelling Up Parks Fund in 2021 to create green spaces on unused, undeveloped or derelict land.

Last September these authorities were eligible to apply for an additional £2,500 from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLIHC) for the purchase of a chess table and accompanying seats for their local parks (chess pieces not included).

20 boards have been placed in parks around Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Cumbria, as part of a wider £1 million government package to increase participation in chess among primary school age children, support elite level chess competition and enhance the “visibility and public presence of chess”.

Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer hopes it will improve creativity, patience and critical thinking among our young. Leigh-born grandmaster Nigel Short MBE describes the scheme as “great news” and Graham Chesters, president of Hull and East Riding Chess Association, says summer chess festivals prove “how playing chess in parks really works”.

But not everyone’s convinced. Henri Murison, chief executive of think tank Northern Powerhouse Partnership, describes the chess board giveaway as “tokenistic”, insisting funds “should be spent on what local people want and need the most”, and Karl Mercer, chairman of the Friends of Central Park voluntary group in Wirral, where Wallasey Central Park has a board, dismisses it as a “white elephant” when park budgets have been cut “to the bone” and levelling up – the Government’s much trumpeted plan to spread opportunity – “should be about things like transport or looking after the community”.

In Hull, where two boards have been installed – one in East Park, on the other side of the city, and one here in Pearson Park, some locals are questioning the priorities of a council that isn’t spending money “where it’s most needed”, as Green puts it.

Case in point are the park’s public toilets which she says the council “don’t look after. It’s just little things, isn’t it, and they’ve spent all that money on that (chess board). The soap dispenser doesn’t work. There’s no toilet roll in one.” She’s right – although “u s–k c–k” is graffitied on the door by way of a welcome message.

The closest I get to a confirmed sighting of anyone having used the chess board is from call centre worker Louis, 31, who is planning to bring his wooden pieces from home and says he’s spotted “a couple of older fellas playing”.

But Samantha Sampson, 40, a housewife who lives on the outskirts of the park and treats it “like our garden” insists it has only been used as “the rolling table and the drinking table”. Rolling? “Joints and things like that. It doesn’t get used as a chess table, unfortunately. It’s a shame.”

We glance at the man currently sipping beer and smoking at the chessboard, as she explains her priority for funding would be making the park “more secure”. “There’s been rape, sexual assault, all sorts, the last few months.” Recently there was a flasher “in broad daylight”, she adds. “We need the (CCTV) cameras to be working, and things like that – not a chess table, to be honest with you.”

On the surface, at least, Pearson Park, which dates back to the 1860s, looks impressive. Boasting its original perimeter carriage drive, the space is thought to have inspired the Hull’s most famous resident, poet Philip Larkin, who lived in a house overlooking it between 1956 and 1974.

The iconic bandstand and gleaming Victorian Conservatory were refurbished with a £3 million 2017 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, which also paid for new windows and doors for the park café run by Frank Penna since 1969. His daughter Claudia is still selling ice lollies to young customers today and says there are also a lot of “older, single” visitors.

Claudia supports the concept of the chess board. But has she actually seen anyone using it? “I don’t know about playing chess. I’ve seen people sitting on it.”

Although rare is the chess player who carts their own pieces around, the park ranger tells me there is a young man trying to source a communal set for the park and encouraging people to play. “He’s really enthusiastic. Once people see it being used, I think it will encourage other people to start getting involved.” Which is “a good thing”, he believes: “Chess is a universal game everyone can play.”

Sadly, the £2,500 board has already been graffitied with the cryptic message “boc mat” which the park ranger tells me he can’t remove with chemicals or “the warranty is out of the window”. David Robinson, 40, a carer, and Patricia Aldridge, a retired nurse, 90 next week, are inspecting the table as I remove a beer bottle top and lay out the plastic pieces from my 1990s travel set (estimated cost: £5, missing-knight substitute: a seashell).

“I think anything you can get activated with is good,” says Patricia, approvingly. I agree. After decades chess-free I recently started to play again, largely online, on chess.com. I’m no Kasparov, but find the concentration required the perfect antidote to screens and stress.

“Do you know how to play?” I ask them hopefully. “I haven’t got a Scoobie,” says David, although he agrees to have a go anyway. But after a few moments and a slightly aggressive move by my bishop David thanked me profusely and says, “We’re going for a walk now.”

I’m about to despair when Masha Brahim-Olenko, 30, a student and part-time waitress on her day off, accepts my invitation to play with a breezy “sure” and plonks herself opposite me. “I don’t know very much about chess. I don’t know anything at all actually,” she says, adding, however, “I’m open to trying new activities and I thought you’re a nice lady, so why not?”

She is so full of bonhomie, and I’m so enjoying the breeze on my skin – a benefit chess.com doesn’t offer – that I’m almost disappointed when I checkmate her. “It’s just a game,” she shrugs. “I liked it. It actually made my day.”

“Because of the social element, or the actual chess?” I ask.

“A little bit of both, probably,” she says, and I wonder if, wasteful or not, there might be hope for this weird idea yet.