Bill Home Play: Parks


Figure 1.-.

Parks were especially important to families like us who didn't have a garden.As well as getting out and running about they also taught you about nature. We had a nice park near our home and school. We used it a lot as children. It played quite a big part in my childhhood - like it did for many city boys I suppose and it changed even over the time I lived in the area. Mum would also take us there after school in the warm weather to use the paddling pool. My brothers like it more than I liked it. There was also a sandpit. I noted the HBC page on sandboxes and I can tell you a little about the subject as far as England is concerned. I already told you about the paddling pool in the park near us that my Mum used to take us to after school sometimes in the Summer. Well next to the paddling pool was what we called the "sandpit". It was quite a large area of sand sunken a couple of feet below the path around it and it had a concrete rectangular block in the middle that kids used to climb up on and jump into the sand.

Importance

Parks were especially important to families like us who didn't have a garden.As well as getting out and running about they also taught you about nature.

Our Park

We had a nice park near our home and school. We used it a lot as children. It played quite a big part in my childhhood - like it did for many city boys I suppose and it changed even over the time I lived in the area. We'd see ducklings and things in the Spring at the lake but the main thing were the trees and especially the conker trees.Although,as I told you, I wasn't into conker fights I loved the trees.There was a big one just before you came to the gate where I left the park and got onto the road where my school was.Because I passed it every day I noticed the changes - bare in the Winter,then the buds,the leaves,the flowers,the conkers appearing and finally the leaves falling as Autumn came on.I don't think that you'd notice the seasons like that in the city without parks. Of course as a boy you don't fully appreciate all of this.

Richmond Park

Richmond Park and Kew Gardens were special park trips with Mum so it was smart dress unlike our local park. Believe it or not your recent picture of a boy doing ballet is connected here as the junior school of the Royal Ballet School was in Richmond Park where my Mum sometimes used to take us on Sunday afternoon when she could afford the tube fare. The school was in a building called The White House in the middle of the park and I never believed my Mum when she said that boys went there as well as girls. I was quite shocked at the time at the thought of boys doing ballet!Any form of dancing did not seem a boys thing to me and I felt sorry for my friend Michael who had to go to Irish dance lessons but even then that was still bettter than ballet! Nowadays with the film "Billy Elliot" ballet is more popular with some boys - but still not many I'd say. I think the school was for boarders but we never saw the on our visits so I don't know what their uniform was like - I mean their schoolwork uniform not their ballet costumes. I don't have any more details as we never saw the children - although I suspect some boarded there. Richmond Park was always exciting too as there were deer roaming loose . The Royal Ballet School in The White House (not your one!) and Mum was always threatening to leave us there if we misbehaved or started arguing.

Kew Gardens

The proper name of Kew Gardens is the Royal Botanical Gardens. It consists of 300 acres of botanical exhibitions open to the public. Kew Gardens are located on the south bank of the Thames River between Richmond and Kew in the suburbs of south-west London. I was very familiar with the giant hot house at Kew Gardens and other exhibits. Mum used to take us there sometimes on a Sunday afternoon. I have told you also that I normally objected to this as I wanted to go out and play after Sunday lunch, but my brother liked it as Kew Gardens had some of the best conker trees and he used to come back with a satchel full. I got into trouble one at school about a field trip to Kew Gardens. The school was very strict about how we dressed when we went out on such trips. And I got it in my head that I didn't want to wear my jumper.

Hampton Court

I recall our visits to Hampton Court, primarily because of the maze. It was another one of our Sunday afternoon activities. We used to go into the maze and get lost so Mum would have to rescue us! As always she always knew exactly the way to get out and how to get in to find us. Once we lost my little brother accidently and could hear him the other side of a hedge but couldn't get to him. Mum heared him crying though and she soon appeared and then came and found us too with my little brother in tow. She wouldn't believe that we had lost him accidently but we had - he had just wandered off!

Other Park

When we moved to another area of London and lived in proper high-rise flats on an estate they didn't have a proper park near there at all - just a small one and a "Rec." (short for recreation ground) and it was much further from the River and more generally built up. That made me realise how lucky I was to grow up in the old area.You could always get a bus to the big parks of course - like Hyde Park or take the tube out to Kew Gardens but it wasn't the same as having one on your doorstep and they didn't have such a variety of things to do nor such a variety of people.

English Parks

The history of urban parks is an interesting study in social history. We are working on this in the activities section of HBC. We have a country page, but do not yet have an individual page on Enhlish parks.



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Created: 6:45 PM 9/28/2004
Last updated: 2:11 AM 5/1/2006