Parks, playgrounds and play centers in England
With the Recreation Grounds Act (1859), provision for active recreation received legal support (Elliot 150). The importance of open space in an urban environement was reflected in a series of Acts of Parliment over the next years: the Public Improvement Act of 1860 and the Open Space Act of 1906. Notwithstanding the increasing number of open spaces, the street certainly was the principal playground for most urban children. (Holme 42) In addition to provide space and play facilities, came the belief that children of the working classes would benefit from healthy play and recreation: at the turn of the century the first „play centers“ began to appear.
The early play centers were all creations of voluntary bodies. Perhaps the first of its kind established was the Children’s Happy Evenings Association opend in 1888. Their first centers were an experiment but by 1914, 96 centers throughout London (besides centers in at least ten other towns) sited in elementary schools, offered activites such as dancing, singing, games, painting and boxing. These centers were only opend one night a week for boys and one night for girls. (Holme 43)
One of the first “settlements” run by socially-conscious middle-class educators for the benefit of local working people and their children, founded in 1890, the Pasmore Edwards Settlement, set up a Play Center opened all evenings and Saturday mornings, when the children’s parents were still at work. By 1915, the 22 centers, led by women, had two major objectifs:
„to improve the bodily and mental development of the children and to prevent juvenile crime or mischief by offering an attractive aternative to the streets„.
After c. 1880, the idea emerged of making sports provision the organizing principle of a park. At that time two parks opened introducing the concept of sports park. The design of parks was very formal, with separate areas for each activity, for boy’s and girl’s play.
Various organizations put pressure, such as the National Playing Fields Association (NPFA, founded 1925), and promoted to include sports fields in the urban parks at the expense of decorative horticulture (Elliot 153).
c. 1937, W.W. Pettigrew stated „In many large towns children’s playgrounds are merely small plots of ground shaled over and marked off by tubular iron posts and rails, …“ Pettigrew also refers to sand gardens and paddling pools as frequently provided.
In the 1920s, Sunday games in the parks spread throughout the country, and in the 1920s, Charles Wicksteed set up the most important firm in the manufacture of play equipment in Britain: Charles Wicksteed & Co. of Kettering.
In 1943, in a survey in their Junior Club Handbook on leisure-time activities by the Under Fourteens Council, attention was drawn on the lack of play spaces, but also to the popularity of the bomb sites and the shells of half-destroyed houses. (Benjamin 16)
„Bomb sites abounded in most of the big cities and towns, and the children had gravitated toward them in no uncertain manner. Opportunities for observing children were numerous. In so far as these games were spontaneous, unsupervised and identical from one part of the country to another, they provided opportunities for study which were without precedent“. (Benjamin 6)
In November 1946, Picture Post carried an illustrated article by Lady Allen of Hurtwood, describing the Skrammellegeplads in Denmark. In 1948, the first adventure playground was established by a voluntary association in Camberwell in 1948. (Benjamin 16)
Clydesdale 1952-1955. Located on a neglected bomb site. The period from 1949-1952 was spend in locating five landlords, contacting local residents, organizing a committee and raising funds. The local authority took over the fencing. It was intended for the age range of 5-10, but younger and older came as well. (Benjamin 20)
All places were started by voluntary bodies. 17 places have been opened with varying degree of success. By 1960, eight had closed permanently, four were open part-time, five were operating full-time (three financed and administered by local authority parks departments, two financed by local education authority and administered by independent committees). Some other playgrounds opened in temporary sites as short-term experiments. Some places were damaged because of poorly fencing and then closed or transformed into other types of play grounds (Crawley, Shoreditch, Birmingham, Hull) (Benjamin 9).
The playground leaders, often poorly payed and trained, had to fulfill high expectations (social and technical skills etc.), and were difficult to find.
From „Junk playground“ to the „Adventure Playground“
In 1954, the NPFA agreed that the term „adventure playground“ should describe a ground where tools and materials only are used, as distinguished from a ground provided with imaginative and natural features which should have a distinct title.
Lollard Playground
NPFA started to offer capital grants and grants toward leaders‘ salaries for a two-year experimental period for each of two projects (Benjamin 26). The first project took place in Liverpool. In 1954, they enlarged the existing, conventional playground by an adventure playground and hired a full-time leader. The second project was Lollard (south-east London borough of Lambeth), opened in April 1955. The site, „still strewn with the bricks and rubble left from a bombed school, had also ben used as an unofficial dumping ground for refuse of all kinds.“ (Benjamin 47)
Parents and neighbors struggled with the untidy aspect of the playground: rubble, a mountain of clay, and unsafe tunnels belonging to the old school. Many preferred to see there a formal and green playground instead. Over time the playground’s acceptance grew.
Notting Hill
In 1959, a new school was build and the London County Council (LCC) approved grants toward a further experiment in Notting Hill. (Benjamin 57) Again this playground was managed by a executive committee of a voluntary association, including representatives from the London Playing Field Association and from the LCC. This experiment ended in 1965, but could go ahead on a nearby site.
Adventure: playing out in Telford Road (Notting Hill Adventure Playground), by Dave Walker
Grimsby
Opened in 1955 on a ground called „the dump“, a tangle of hight grass, broken bricks and bicycle frames (Benjamin 60). Again some neighbors complained the untidy, smoky and noisy site (the nuisance caused by the children waiting for the playground to open), others approved it. (Benjamin 63).
Biblio
Brent Elliott, Ken Fieldhouse: Play and Sport, in: Woudstra, Jan, and Ken Fieldhouse. The Regeneration of Public Parks. London: E & FN Spon, 2000, p. 149-160
Holme, Anthea, and Peter Massie. Children’s Play: a Study of Needs and Opportunities: A Study for the Council for Children’s Welfare. London: Joseph, 1970
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-project/institutions/passmore_edwards_settlement.htm
Benjamin, Joe. In Search of Adventure: A Study in Play Leadership. London: National Council of Social Service, 1966