Great Cornard Country Park plaque honours contributions of ‘visionary’ late former councillor Mick Cornish, who helped to establish site

The contributions of a long-serving councillor, teacher and trade unionist have been immortalised, with the installation of a new memorial at the park he helped to establish.

Family members and former colleagues of the late Mick Cornish gathered at Great Cornard Country Park this week for the formal unveiling of a new sign, with a plaque in his honour.

Mr Cornish, who died in December 2020, was widely known locally for his decades of service with Great Cornard Parish Council, which included three stints as chairman between 1961 and 2014.

Following his election to the old West Suffolk County Council – which eventually became the current unified authority – he led the council’s Labour Party group, with a key focus on education.

This interest stemmed from his educational career, starting as a history teacher at Sudbury High School for Girls, then head of history and French at Manningtree County Secondary School.

While teaching, Mr Cornish was a member of the National Union of Teachers and remained an active trade unionist throughout his life, as part of the Transport and General Workers Union, and later Unite.

In addition, he stood in five general elections and one European Parliament election, and served as deputy general secretary of the Fabian Society from 1968 to 1973.

On Monday, current parish council chairman Tom Keane unveiled the country park sign, in a ceremony attended by councillors, staff and Mr Cornish’s family, including his wife Barbara.

Tony Bavington – a fellow Labour councillor for Great Cornard’s north ward – described him as a ‘working class intellectual, Fabian, trade unionist, co-operator, educationist and visionary’.

He recounted that Mr Cornish had negotiated the land purchase while working at the Fabian Society office – just around the corner from the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.

There, he successfully persuaded the ministry to grant a compulsory purchase order for the land that would later encompass the country park, Blackhouse Lane sports field and the allotments.

He said: “When Mick became chairman of Great Cornard Parish Council for the second time, Blackhouse Lane sports field was up and running but nothing had been done to establish the country park.

“It was Mick’s drive and leadership that led to Great Cornard being the first parish council in the country successfully to create a country park, opened by David Bellamy in 1986.

“Not only the country park, though – during that same time, Mick took us to see developments in South Woodham Ferrers and Martlesham Heath.

“We successfully persuaded the original developers of the Hedgerows estate to collect all the parcels of amenity land into one village green.

“Mick also wanted to establish more recreation land in the north ward.

“That idea germinated in the Local Nature Reserve in Shawlands Avenue, during Raj Nandi’s chairmanship of Great Cornard Parish Council at the start of the new millennium.”