As a child I was encouraged to play in Priory Park, especially in the little playground area which contained a number of lethal pieces of equipment.
This playground in the 1900’s wasn’t in Priory Park – b ...
As a child I was encouraged to play in Priory Park, especially in the little playground area which contained a number of lethal pieces of equipment.
This playground in the 1900’s wasn’t in Priory Park – but you get the idea.
I remember the slide being enormously high and pretty steep with very shallow edges. This meant that you could slip down it at great speed and I always ended up in a bruised heap on the concrete below. The swings were also set into concrete and my ambition was to swing as high as some of the really cool older girls who would get the swing going on a great arc then leap off the seat at its highest point.
Again, not in Priory park, but this photo from the 70s looks just the same as my memories of the 60s.
There was also a kind of multiple occupancy rocking horse and a roundabout, which also served as a launch pad if you spun it fast enough and flung yourself off, and a see-saw which wasn’t quite properly balanced so it thundered down to resting point and shook your coccyx. We may have been a bit bashed up but we loved it and felt free and full of adventure. This is the man we need to thank.
Charles Wicksteed was very keen on the children playing. He was an engineer and wanted to encourage children to play and families to take up healthy lifestyles – so he opened his own park in Kettering – Wicksteed Park in 1921, before going on to manufacturing swings and other playground equipment, which were exported around the world.
Charles’s swings in his park.
Recently the Park trustees released newly-found photos from the 1920s in their search to track down surviving play equipment so they can archive the site’s history. Their call was answered and his original prototype was found in a Manor House once owned by the family – still in great condition. The 12ft (3.6m) high swing with its thick wooden seat, lack of name plate, and unique ornate red mountings on top of its green frame was recognisably a pre-production model.
Here’s an image of ‘Britain’s first slide’ – by Charles Wicksteed.
I would like to say a big thank you to Charles – the day our family bought a garden swing, very similar to the one below, was one of the most exciting of my life!
