Playing Truant on Coldhams Common
Ann recalls when she was a pupil at Coleridge School and would play truancy at Coldhams Common with her friends. They would pick blackberries and gooseberries, fish in the stream, play on the Riffle Butts, paddle and visit the pigs…. until the Truancy Officer would pick them up and take them back to school to […]
Hula Hoop Highs
Whilst on Parker’s Piece with Playbox a group of Italian pupils asked if they could borrow the hula hoops whilst we were setting up for the day. We loved their inventiveness as they created an entirely new game in the 5 minutes they were there.
American Tan Tights and Tennis Ball Game
This plaque marks the spot where Hilary Joy Cox Condron recreated the popular game of Tan Tights and a Tennis Ball, 23rd June, 2023.
Anna and Elastics at Parker’s Piece
Whilst on Parker’s Piece with Playbox (June 2023) we met Anna who showed us with great verve how to play elastics. You’d be forgiven for thinking she still practiced daily, but no, these were the moves she learned, repeatedly in the playground at school as a child.
Playground Games
Remembering Playground Games from the 60s by Paul. Conkers Paul: You wouldn’t choose a conker that was squidgy or look like its shell’s going to crack off. You need them nice and hard. We used to leave them out in dad’s shed, pick them in the summer. Then give them to dad and he’d […]
Award Winning Elephants at Ditton Fields
This community project on Ditton Fields Rec was led by artist Liz Leyh (who created the famous concrete cows in Milton Keynes in the 70s) and Free Form Arts Trust. It won the RIBA award for community design in 1986.
Head butted by goats
By: Agnes Newling In my early days Oxford Road was a quiet cul-de-sac with a cornfield across the bottom and grass where we children could play. Unfortunately a man kept some goats tethered there and if we got too near them they would lower their heads and butt us over. Most of the lower half […]
Scooters and bloody noses
By: Bill Silvester This was just prior to the move to number ten (Warkworth Street). I remember the house very well as I lived there until the end of the war. I used to play outside in the street and had a scooter to use. I actually rode my scooter into one of the common […]
Rope swings and homemade buns
By: Sue Santry I had a very happy childhood in the Barnwell area and remember most the freedom of playing in the streets and across the fields with all the other children. I can remember taking homemade buns and going off across the field to the iron bridge where we had a rope swing and […]
Snowball fight, 1969
By: Mike Petty / Cambridge Evening News ‘Bad weather does not deter children: youngsters in Chalk Grove, off Queen Edith’s Way, throw snowballs in November 1969.’ Reproduced with kind permission from the Museum of Cambridge from a book in their collection titled “Memory Lane Cambridge” by Mike Petty and published by Cambridge Evening News 1999, […]
