Staveley nursery opens community room in memory of Steve Lismore

Treasures Neighbourhood Nursery in Staveley has officially opened the Steve Lismore Room in honour of the late charity founder who died in a tragic climbing accident.

The opening was led by Margaret Mason OBE, Chair of the Board of Trustees at Treasures, and guests included Toby Perkins, MP for Chesterfield, and Councillor Tricia Gilby, Leader of Chesterfield Borough Council.

The community room will be used to host a variety of events for local parents to attend.

The Steve Lismore Room is in the nursery’s original building at 23 High Street, Staveley. Treasures opened its second building at 32 High Street as demand for places grew, so that it could support more families in Staveley and the surrounding communities.

Over the past two years the Treasures team and the board of trustees have renovated and completely redeveloped the building at number 32, and running two sites has doubled the number of nursery places available.

Steve Lismore, who died in February this year following a climbing accident in Italy, founded Touchstone, the Staveley-based charity that runs Treasures. As a trustee he worked tirelessly over many years to keep the nursery going and to improve it for local children and their families.

He was also a well-known local councillor, representing Staveley North on Chesterfield Borough Council, where he was cabinet member for health and wellbeing, and before that Chesterfield North on Derbyshire County Council.

Treasures was set up to support local families, and every penny it receives goes back into the setting. It provides funded childcare for eligible families and subsidised places for vulnerable children and runs drop-in sessions where parents can get advice on speech and language, toilet training and healthy eating.

That work was recognised nationally last year when Treasures won the Community Support Award at the Nursery World Awards 2025 for The Edge Project. Working with the volunteer-led Edge Centre in Staveley, the nursery helped redevelop a disused garden and created a children’s allotment, with half of everything the children grow given to the community food bank. Families at the nursery also donate to a harvest collection each year for local foodbanks and care homes.

Margaret Mason OBE, who chairs the board of trustees, has spent decades working to raise standards in early years education in Derbyshire and across the UK.

Margaret said: “Steve cared deeply about Staveley and he gave Treasures a huge amount of his time over the years, so it feels right that this room carries his name. We wanted it to be a place the whole community could use, and I know Steve would have loved seeing local people coming through the door.”

Treasures Neighbourhood Nursery is part of Touchstone Community Development, a registered charity (charity number 1069864). The nursery provides funded childcare for eligible families and subsidised places to vulnerable children within Staveley.