Volunteer with us
Volunteer with us to play your part in The Green Estate story. Our incredibly talented volunteers contribute a huge amount of time and skills to support what we do. They help us continue to look after this special place and bring it to life along the way.
There is a wide range of opportunities to volunteer at The Green Estate, so whether you are looking to work in our historic spaces, educational environments, the great outdoors or behind the scenes, we have opportunities to suit all interests and time commitments.
As a place-based organisation, we prioritise providing opportunities to our neighbours in the Manor and Castle Ward and nearby areas. We do keep some spaces free for volunteers further afield, so if you’re keen please do still get in touch to see if we have capacity.
We love working with people from all walks of life, with no experience needed. Have a look through the roles below and get in touch with us to apply or ask any questions you might have.
Exploring Tudor history and beyond
While Sheffield Manor Lodge is most famous for its Tudor owners and captive Queen, it is a place that has been used throughout the centuries, adapting to the needs of the people that lived and worked there. Volunteer to help us tell this story and offer our visitors a unique opportunity to step back in time and experience the history and heritage of the area.
Watch the video below to find how the Friends of Sheffield Manor Lodge have and still continue to support The Green Estate CIC for over 20 years.
Visitor Interactor
Our visitor interactors help share the stories of Sheffield Manor Lodge and its landscape with our visitors. You will assist visitors around our historic ruins and find engaging ways to talk about our wide-ranging history. No prior knowledge of Sheffield Manor Lodge is needed before you volunteer – only a passion for storytelling and an interest in sharing stories with a wide range of people.
What you’ll be doing:
- Leading tours around our historic ruins and in our Turret House
- Providing great customer service by answering questions from our visitors
- Being an active part of a small team
We are looking for support on Sundays and time commitment is flexible.
Visitor Experience Assistant
Visitor Experience Assistants help provide a warm and engaging customer service. They welcome customers, serve refreshments and help keep the Discovery Centre looking its best. This role is for you if you are cheerful and like to meet new people.
What you’ll be doing:
- Putting your great hospitality skills into practice
- Using the till and serving refreshments
- Being an active and involved member of a small team
We are looking for support on Sundays and throughout the school holidays. Time commitment is flexible.
Education
Our Discovery Centre explores and presents the story of Sheffield Manor Lodge as one of a changing landscape. It’s from here that we create educational experiences for visitors to explore our historic buildings, wander through our beautiful grounds and take part in fun activities.
Education and Activity Assistant
Education and Activity Assistants help bring Sheffield Manor Lodge’s Tudor stories to life. You’ll know how to engage with children and their families, but you won’t need to have any teaching experience to volunteer for this role.
What you’ll be doing:
- Working alongside our staff to deliver school groups
- Supporting the schools that visit and take part in our activities by being a kind and helpful member of the team
- Being an active and involved member of a small team
We’re looking for support throughout the year and time commitment is flexible.
Children’s Activity Assistant
If you love being around children then this could be the role for you. More casual than our education sessions are our school holiday activities, where you will help children (and sometimes parents/carers!) with crafts and trails along different themes.
What you’ll be doing:
- Working alongside our staff to help children with activities
- Supporting the families that visit and taking part in our activities by being a kind and helpful member of the team
- Helping to come up with ideas for new crafts and trails
We’re looking for support throughout the school holidays and time commitment is flexible.
Gardening and Growing
Join our Gardening and Growing Team to care for beautiful gardens, grow and share food, and help local green spaces thrive for people and nature.
Our volunteering takes place across Sheffield Manor Lodge, Manor Fields Park, and Manor Oaks House. These green spaces include pictorial meadows, allotments, orchards, historic apothecary gardens, woodland, parkland, ponds and even beehives. Alongside the practical work, we also mix in occasional social activities, seasonal crafts, wildlife surveys and other opportunities to enjoy and learn about the spaces together.
Our volunteer groups bring together a diverse mix of local people, with different backgrounds, experiences and abilities. No previous experience is needed as we’ll show you what to do and how to use tools safely, with time for a brew and a chat along the way.
We work together across three regular days, each with a different focus:
Tuesdays: Gardens and horticulture
Tuesdays are perfect if you enjoy gardening, want to try it for the first time, or want to experience the mental and physical health benefits of being outside and getting your hands dirty. They can also be a great way to add practical experience to horticultural or land-based studies, while learning useful skills through the seasons.
What you’ll be doing:
- Caring for beautiful gardens and creating spaces where plants, wildlife and people can thrive
- Building gardening skills alongside the changing seasons, from understanding soil and composting, to propagation, and shaping shrubs and trees
- Taking part in seasonal planting and projects that bring new colour, structure and life to our gardens
The team meets at Manor Oaks House from 10am–2.30pm, with one hour for lunch.
Thursdays: Park stewardship
Thursdays take us to Manor Fields Park, a Green Flag Award-winning park managed by the Green Estate and something of a hidden gem. You’ll work alongside local people on practical projects and is a good match if you enjoy larger-scale outdoor jobs and want the satisfaction of improving an important green space for the community and local wildlife.
What you could be doing:
- Managing and improving the park’s rich variety of habitats, from grasslands and heathland to woodlands, ponds and streams
- Keeping the park welcoming, accessible and well cared for through work such as clearing vegetation, restoring gardens and bringing overlooked corners back to life
- Working alongside the community to shape and care for the park, helping make it somewhere you know, care about and feel proud to call your own
The team meets at Manor Fields Park from 10am–2.30pm, with one hour for lunch.
Fridays: Food growing
On Fridays we focus on local food growing on-site in our Forest Garden, allotments and orchards. Together we learn practical food-growing skills, follow crops from seed to harvest, and cook, eat and share what we grow. These beautiful, serene spaces offer a good dose of nature connection while bringing people together around food.
What you’ll be doing:
- Growing vegetables, herbs and fruit across our Forest Garden, allotments and orchards, following them from sowing and planting through to harvest
- Building practical food-growing skills through the seasons, including propagation, soil and crop care, and tending fruit trees
- Harvesting, cooking, eating and sharing what we grow and bringing people together around food
The team meets at Manor Oaks House from 10am–12.30pm.
Joining the gardening and growing sessions
We run our groups in two-month blocks, themed around the changing seasons. New volunteers tend to join us at the beginning of a block, so you have the chance to try out volunteering without making a long-term commitment. There is no pressure to join the same session each week, or every session in a block – we just ask you to let us know in advance if you are planning to attend a session so we can prepare tools, activities and support.
We also run one-off volunteering sessions throughout the year—please keep an eye on our Events page and social media to keep up to date with these.
Get in touch
As you can see, there are many ways to get involved with The Green Estate, no matter what interests you.
To learn more about volunteering, feel free to contact us by phone or email. If you’re ready to apply, simply download the application form and send it to [email protected], telling us a bit about yourself and why you’d like to volunteer with us.
Gallery
Image copyright: All copyright & courtesy of The Green Estate, unless stated. Image bottom left; © Andy Brown / Sheffield Wheat Experiment.