Playgrounds - A Generation of Changes
Created | Updated Jan 20, 2010
Playgrounds, those little areas of buzzing activity where can be heard the sound of children laughing, shouting and screaming. The echoes of childish voices resounds through the metal and plastic jungles of entertainment, cascading through to our minds the knowledge of a time happy and safe. Chasing around the playground, jumping on all the activities, climbing, sliding, riding and swinging their way through a day with no worries or stress, enjoying the minutes that last for hours.
Swings squeak reassuringly, seesaws thud gently and metal pipes clang to the beat of scampering hands and feet upon the climbing frame. The sight of today's English playgrounds stirs memories of things that have not existed since the 1970s.
As well as certain things missing there are one or two items that are a modern day addition. Built in rubber matting and safety flooring has certainly never been used in such quantity at playgrounds. Today most of the whole area of the playground is built upon this stiff, springy matting, so even if you tripped on your shoelace, your hands and knees would connect with relative cushiony softness. Even in the days without this stuff, where the floor was rough concrete underneath the sky-scraping climbing frames and children balanced on slivers of metal 20ft up, it's hard to recall a playground death. Still, there must have been scraped skin and broken bones somewhere along the line. Were kids more fearless then and more apt to treat a fall or bang of tender knee, part of the experience? Or were there more occasions than were heard of when accidents happened that were serious enough to herald the health and safety brigade? It is also probably a lot to do with the blame and claim culture we're living in now, but that's another story.
We still have the swings of course, including the incredibly-difficult-to-get-out-of baby type. One thing that hasn't changed is the sight of the older kid's swings wrapped around the top supporting bars so tightly and out of reach that they often remain that way for months.
The round-a-bouts are still there but not the magnificent, many compartmentalised or seated type. Do you remember those? Their diameter seemed huge and some had seats or benches radiating out from the centre. Others were solid and boarded, where you had to jump up on to it to sit down. The ones seen recently really are much smaller and are only the standing type. It's a case of simplicity to maintain cost effectiveness taking priority over the creation of a varied and exciting playground experience.
Maybe it's because we were small that everything is remembered as much bigger than perhaps it was, but what about those slides that you dont see anymore? All that's left in some playgrounds is an inconspicuous patch when something big and scary once used to stand. These slides were incredibly tall, teetering on jagged metal steps, framed in unthinkably low handrails and surrounded by nothing but head-splitting concrete. If you got on those steps with a queue of kids behind you and got a case of the collie-wobbles half way up because you felt this was just stupidly high as you looked incredulously through the metal-jawed steps at the blurry stone floor a hundred feet below, then tough. It was slide or die time, really. Or cry and tremble embarrassingly until your mum made all the kids behind you come back down to let you off. That one was to be avoided if at all possible. Now, it really was surprising not seeing kids fall like lemmings from these metal giraffes. It seems though, it is slides in general that are missing from our modern day playgrounds. The occasional tiny plastic one can sometimes be seen, spiralling pathetically from three feet up but it does seem that in the name of health and safety another one bites the dust.
Seesaws are still one of the mainstays in all their varied lengths and materials but whatever happened to the rocking horses? They werent strictly rocking horses as they didnt rock so much as slide backwards and forwards with a stomach lurching rise and fall at the end of each motion. They were usually of wooden construction fashioned in the vague shape of a ship or more accurately a deep canoe with benches and handles. The things invented to churn up little stomachs! It wasn't too bad if you sat over the central pivot but sit at the stern or bow and you risked being quickly ejected over the kids in front or being thrown over onto the floor. Aren't there always those kids that, with great glee, do things too fast just to watch the terror appear on little faces as the poor mites bottom bounces two feet from the seat, tiny hands still gripping the cold hard handles? Adults still do that to their kids on seesaws.
Yes, there is certainly a lack of these dangerous beasts nowadays. Although tiny terror versions have taken over. You know the ones - tiny plastic animals or vehicles mounted on a fat spring with a single seat on top. Now these are dangerous! As is the nature of kids, their over zealousness in flinging themselves in a suicidal manor back and forth sends a shivery tingle through the spine of watching parents. They enthusiastically throw themselves so wildly about on these springy menaces that eventually plastic separates from spring and the child connects with the now rubbery floor covering and the parents are glad it's no longer a concrete landing.
Climbing frames have shrunk and mostly changed construction. They used to be huge cubes of metal piping fashioned into frames of about 16 feet square and 10ft high. Obviously there were variations of this. The metal piping wasnt treated or wrought to enhance friction. The whole thing was basically a load of scaffolding. Even builders use wooden planks! It was only occasionally you saw a lone hero blatantly risking his little life clambering upon the very top of the frame. Now you spot smaller versions, tailored more to the habits of a hamster, long runs of various connected apparatus beginning with a rope wall and ending in a firemans pole. Not particularly much safer apart from the ever ready rubber floor and the frame generally being no more than six feet at its highest point.
So, there are parts of todays playgrounds that have certainly been improved as regards to safety but there are the odd one or two things that are just as lethal, including infestations of noisy teenagers with their associated flotsam of strewn cider bottles, fag ends, condoms and needles. Taking into account all of the old swinging, twirling, finger trapping and fall inducing equipment of yester-years playgrounds, it does make one grateful for the softer landings of today and the lower impact, safer apparatus, though one can't help reminiscing fondly over these old child munching beasts.
Swings squeak reassuringly, seesaws thud gently and metal pipes clang to the beat of scampering hands and feet upon the climbing frame. The sight of today's English playgrounds stirs memories of things that have not existed since the 1970s.
As well as certain things missing there are one or two items that are a modern day addition. Built in rubber matting and safety flooring has certainly never been used in such quantity at playgrounds. Today most of the whole area of the playground is built upon this stiff, springy matting, so even if you tripped on your shoelace, your hands and knees would connect with relative cushiony softness. Even in the days without this stuff, where the floor was rough concrete underneath the sky-scraping climbing frames and children balanced on slivers of metal 20ft up, it's hard to recall a playground death. Still, there must have been scraped skin and broken bones somewhere along the line. Were kids more fearless then and more apt to treat a fall or bang of tender knee, part of the experience? Or were there more occasions than were heard of when accidents happened that were serious enough to herald the health and safety brigade? It is also probably a lot to do with the blame and claim culture we're living in now, but that's another story.
We still have the swings of course, including the incredibly-difficult-to-get-out-of baby type. One thing that hasn't changed is the sight of the older kid's swings wrapped around the top supporting bars so tightly and out of reach that they often remain that way for months.
The round-a-bouts are still there but not the magnificent, many compartmentalised or seated type. Do you remember those? Their diameter seemed huge and some had seats or benches radiating out from the centre. Others were solid and boarded, where you had to jump up on to it to sit down. The ones seen recently really are much smaller and are only the standing type. It's a case of simplicity to maintain cost effectiveness taking priority over the creation of a varied and exciting playground experience.
Maybe it's because we were small that everything is remembered as much bigger than perhaps it was, but what about those slides that you dont see anymore? All that's left in some playgrounds is an inconspicuous patch when something big and scary once used to stand. These slides were incredibly tall, teetering on jagged metal steps, framed in unthinkably low handrails and surrounded by nothing but head-splitting concrete. If you got on those steps with a queue of kids behind you and got a case of the collie-wobbles half way up because you felt this was just stupidly high as you looked incredulously through the metal-jawed steps at the blurry stone floor a hundred feet below, then tough. It was slide or die time, really. Or cry and tremble embarrassingly until your mum made all the kids behind you come back down to let you off. That one was to be avoided if at all possible. Now, it really was surprising not seeing kids fall like lemmings from these metal giraffes. It seems though, it is slides in general that are missing from our modern day playgrounds. The occasional tiny plastic one can sometimes be seen, spiralling pathetically from three feet up but it does seem that in the name of health and safety another one bites the dust.
Seesaws are still one of the mainstays in all their varied lengths and materials but whatever happened to the rocking horses? They werent strictly rocking horses as they didnt rock so much as slide backwards and forwards with a stomach lurching rise and fall at the end of each motion. They were usually of wooden construction fashioned in the vague shape of a ship or more accurately a deep canoe with benches and handles. The things invented to churn up little stomachs! It wasn't too bad if you sat over the central pivot but sit at the stern or bow and you risked being quickly ejected over the kids in front or being thrown over onto the floor. Aren't there always those kids that, with great glee, do things too fast just to watch the terror appear on little faces as the poor mites bottom bounces two feet from the seat, tiny hands still gripping the cold hard handles? Adults still do that to their kids on seesaws.
Yes, there is certainly a lack of these dangerous beasts nowadays. Although tiny terror versions have taken over. You know the ones - tiny plastic animals or vehicles mounted on a fat spring with a single seat on top. Now these are dangerous! As is the nature of kids, their over zealousness in flinging themselves in a suicidal manor back and forth sends a shivery tingle through the spine of watching parents. They enthusiastically throw themselves so wildly about on these springy menaces that eventually plastic separates from spring and the child connects with the now rubbery floor covering and the parents are glad it's no longer a concrete landing.
Climbing frames have shrunk and mostly changed construction. They used to be huge cubes of metal piping fashioned into frames of about 16 feet square and 10ft high. Obviously there were variations of this. The metal piping wasnt treated or wrought to enhance friction. The whole thing was basically a load of scaffolding. Even builders use wooden planks! It was only occasionally you saw a lone hero blatantly risking his little life clambering upon the very top of the frame. Now you spot smaller versions, tailored more to the habits of a hamster, long runs of various connected apparatus beginning with a rope wall and ending in a firemans pole. Not particularly much safer apart from the ever ready rubber floor and the frame generally being no more than six feet at its highest point.
So, there are parts of todays playgrounds that have certainly been improved as regards to safety but there are the odd one or two things that are just as lethal, including infestations of noisy teenagers with their associated flotsam of strewn cider bottles, fag ends, condoms and needles. Taking into account all of the old swinging, twirling, finger trapping and fall inducing equipment of yester-years playgrounds, it does make one grateful for the softer landings of today and the lower impact, safer apparatus, though one can't help reminiscing fondly over these old child munching beasts.
