Play Ground Equipment

[Twocky61]

Nowadays in playgrounds with roundabouts & climbing frames & such like we have a cushioned mat on the ground so if little Johnny or Mary fall off and hit they ground they wont be injured

In the days of old this was not the case. I was on the roundabout where another kid pushes it round. I fell off & caught my foot under it. Another time I fell off an escalator in Shepherds (now part of the House of Fraser group) department store in Newcastle upon Tyne

Total bliss back then If we fell off a playground ride we just got straight back up. brush ourselves down & get right back on

[marc]

Re: Play Ground Equipment

Falling off the roundabout and getting your foot caught, happened to many kids, me included. Generally you got dragged around with it. Most of the time, you were lucky enough to get away with nothing more than grazed skin. Unfortunately, there were some serious injuries.

Another thing we used to do; put "candle grease" on the slide. Have a candle and use it like a pencil drawing a line down the slide. There were some very large and long slides about in the 1970s. Pity the unfortunate soul who did not realise what was on the slide. Innocently enough, the unfortunate soul would climb the steps to the top of the slide. Sit on the slide, and off they would go. Within moments, they would descend at three times the normal speed. The end of the slide came extremely quick....off the end they would sail...often to land in a heap on the ground.

Now, pity the poor soul (me) who went down the slide laying flat forward not realising the candle had been drawn down the slide previous....blood & tears followed has I shot off the bottom imitating Super Man.....

[Mulletino]

Re: Play Ground Equipment

Yup, the climbing frame was a metal scaffold affair with a concrete floor, usually covered in broken glass bottles and p!ss.

All of the equipment was on concrete and made form hard material with nice gaps for limbs, except the swings, they were on grass with the bit under the swing worn out and the bits surrounding it uncut with hidden dog poo in, waiting for you to land in it when you jumped off.

[big kid]

Re: Play Ground Equipment

could you imagine the kids of today playing on the stuff we had.

[Twocky61]

Re: Play Ground Equipment

Back then we kids invented our own games such a building our own rickety tree house which would definitely not pass H&S legislation nowadays

We kids were fitter back then with no internet, computer games or our own TV in our bedrooms.We happily played outside in the fresh air

[darren]

Re: Play Ground Equipment


These baked in the sun for hours until recess, when excited kids would slide down before walking away with first-degree burns. Good times!



Spider-Man skills were put to the test with this structure. Kids climbed upside-down on the inside of the metal rig before heading up and over on the outside. Feet were a-danglin'.


This combined the best of giant strides and merry-go-rounds in a conical platform of doom. Perfectly safe, right?


These rocking animals are now made of plastic and other safer materials, but the old-school ones were made entirely of metal. Rust and second-degree burns: perfect for playgrounds!

[darren]

Re: Play Ground Equipment



Swing till you vomit? Yes please! These tire swings were entertaining, but also very dangerous. Most of them were held by a hand-tied rope, plus the rubber was a breeding ground for mold, mosquitos and other insects.



Kids ran around in circles with giant strides before holding on for dear life as they orbited the pole. This was the best way to burn some energy and a great way to get injured.


What goes up must come down! Sure, some kids rode the see-saw properly, but they also balanced on this plank of wood, continually rising up and then sinking down until they fell off and called for the school nurse.

[Twocky61]

Re: Play Ground Equipment

These baked in the sun for hours until recess, when excited kids would slide down before walking away with first-degree burns. Good times!



Spider-Man skills were put to the test with this structure. Kids climbed upside-down on the inside of the metal rig before heading up and over on the outside. Feet were a-danglin'.


This combined the best of giant strides and merry-go-rounds in a conical platform of doom. Perfectly safe, right?


These rocking animals are now made of plastic and other safer materials, but the old-school ones were made entirely of metal. Rust and second-degree burns: perfect for playgrounds!

The Teepee shaped roundabout we had at Pitville park in Cheltenham UK

[staffslad]

Re: Play Ground Equipment

Yep, there's a world of difference between playgrounds of yesteryear and today, plus the attitudes of those using them. If you hurt yourself back in the day, your mom would dab TCP or Dettol on your cut/graze, plaster it and away you go. Nowadays, the first thing many do is to find a no win-no fee solicitor to extract money from the council.

My local park in the 60s and 70s had the usual roundabouts, climbing frames, swings and slides. There were frame swings for little kids to sit in and the normal ones for older kids, both under which were rough concrete. There was a small slide for little kids and a rather high one for bigger ones. There was a horse which rocked back and forth for about 6 kids to sit on. We also had a 'witch's hat', a cone-shaped frame which you sat on and it could be made to spin round androck to and fro as it did so. We had a couple of tennis courts surfaced with rough concrete and with faded or non-existent markings plus droopy net--we didn't produce too many Murrays on that. There was a paddling pool, but no-one in their right mind would use it for fear of broken glass. There was a 9-hole putting course and if you were a bit flush you could hire a golf club and ball from the parkie. Actually, the park was a cheap place for a date. I took many a girl there with a bag of chips and sat on the swings or roundabout and ate them, then had a go on the golf if funds stretched to it.

[Twocky61]

Re: Play Ground Equipment

We also had a 'witch's hat', a cone-shaped frame which you sat on and it could be made to spin round androck to and fro as it did so

That's the one

[staffslad]

Re: Play Ground Equipment

The witch's hat had been there since the 1940s as my mom remembered playing on it when she was a girl. It was set a distance from the other equipment for some reason. It was one of my favourites but for most fun you needed a few to be on it.

[zabadak]

Re: Play Ground Equipment

Banned many years ago...

[darren]

Re: Play Ground Equipment




The idea of the sport was to hit the ball around the pole until the ball couldn't circle again. OOORRRR, the idea of the sport was to hit the other kid in the head so hard that they went to the nurse's office with a concussion.
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Kids were Tarzan of the playground with this apparatus, which let them dangle as they sped to the other platform. Seriously, what could go wrong?

[George 1978]

Re: Play Ground Equipment

This reminds me of a 1980s Saturday afternoon at my local park in the playground bit. A big enormous slide where you could probably see the whole of the city from the top before sliding down.

I remember going down on a slide backwards, in other words, I was facing the other way. I slid to the bottom and then - bang - I slid off it and onto the hard floor, didn't expecting it. I had a painful backside for a short while when I got off it.

Does anyone remember the playground safety campaign circa 1987, when there was a national campaign to get soft turf or woodchips around the areas of swings, slides and roundabouts to make the areas a lot more safer as quite a few kids were being injured falling off the apparatus and onto concrete? You may remember Esther Rantzen on That's Life! doing their own campaign - cue Esther dropping a plate on a sample of soft turf with the plate remains intact. She drops the plate on a sample of concrete and the plate smashed.

Woodchips may have been a lot safer on the ground, but I remember this craze of kids putting the stuff down people's backs. They would find a use for anything back then.

[Trickyvee]

Re: Play Ground Equipment

In my infant school we had concrete structures built onto the concrete yard. Painful if you fell off them! Also a climbing frame made of pure rust. It was on the grass, or should I say a bald bit of solid, parched mud frequently adorned with bits of broken glass from teens who would sneak into the yard at night.