In my recent rant in response to the Play England findings that children aren’t playing outside anymore, I made the assertion that the crux of the problem is the lack of stimulating places to play. Since then I’ve been filled by misty eyed nostalgia, perhaps fuelled as consequence of recently turning 40 and have been contemplating how things have changed since I was a cut legged, mucky faced, tree climbing nipper. More to the point I’ve been mulling over how different is the great, wild outdoor world for my children.
We know that scandalously 10,000 school playing fields were lost between 1979 and 2010. That’s just the figure for schools fields. We also know there are more houses and less land. However statistics don’t always reflect reality, the key point is about the quality and availability of play spaces for the individual – for example a 1 hectare quality play space on your doorstep is better that a 10 hectares space you have to travel to or 20 hectares of open but bland space or 50 hectares of fenced off land.
So how does the availability of open space from my childhood differ from that of my children? Well, thanks to the developers of past generations, theirs is actually better. Our house was built in the late 19th century for the workers at a nearby bleach works. They must have known a few things about sustainability and liveability then that have we since forgot because along with the houses they included a big strip of communal land, allotments and a fishing lodge (now a charming duck pond). Whereas I grew up on an estate of 316 houses (the exact number is etched indelibly in my mind because I did the paper round) that was built in the late 60’s with no communal space. There were plenty of unofficial play areas as I will outline later. Digressing slightly there is now a new housing estate on the site of the bleach works and despite the fact this housing is toward the higher end of the market, gardens are small or non-existent. There is, however, a communal space but it’s the most bland uninteresting morsel of land and significantly a key selling point of the development is the aforementioned duck pond!
Anyhow, because my parents still live in the same house, I can make a direct comparison between then and now in terms of the availability of play:
1 Big garden: Obviously same house same garden – well actually it’s a lot neater now it’s a retired couple’s private garden and not a kids play area. Only looking back now do I realise how lucky we were to have a decent garden, as did my friend who lived next door because the majority of houses are not blessed with particularly play worthy gardens and I guess that’s why most of the play on the estate focused on our two houses.
2 The road. As I said there was no formal play space on the estate and it sounds strange to say this now but games including football, rugby (tag) cricket, tennis, athletics and British bulldogs took place on the road all the time. The road was generally quiet and drivers seemed to accommodate this and tolerate the few second it took to move the cricket stumps, goal post etc. without issue. Today there are more cars on the road and they seem to drive faster but what stops the games in the first instance is the cars parked on the road. 30 years ago, all the cars and indeed most visitors’ cars would fit in people’s driveways but now there’s always cars parked at the roadside so you struggle to find a unobstructed football pitch, cricket strip let alone a clear 60m sprint.
3 Spare land. When I grew up there were small tracts of spare land all around the fringes of the estate, most notably behind the houses opposite where a public footpath stretched for about 100m surrounded by a nice wild buffer of land with rocks and tree to climb – perfect hide and seek territory. The footpath is still there but encroachment from gardens and unchecked vegetation mean it’s now very narrow, muddy, overgrown and of little play value. All the other spare bits of play land that have also gone.
4 Play area. The nearest play area and the only which was a comfortable walk away, has gone.
5 Country park run by the local authority: A short drive/bus/cycle ride away. This is a weird one because there’s been lottery investment in certain areas, whereas others have suffered terminal decline due to a lack of funding. On the plus side there’s a fantastic golf complex, a little craft area and both the café and gift shop are much improved. On the negative; the historic greenhouses, which had tropical plants and a butterfly house are now but rotted timber, the Zoo (thankfully as it was too small), model village, crazy golf, ladybird rides and splash pool have all gone. This clearly shows the craziness of our funding streams, that we are able to finance shiny new things whilst at the same cutting the budgets which are vital to maintain our existing infrastructure and therefore causing it to irrecoverably decay.
So yes perhaps it’s not just misty eyed nostalgia when I say “tis not like it twas in my day!”
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