At the north end of the Dip.
Stop 6 – Of the rubbish-dump adventure playground.
Narrator: The lower ground to our north is what we call ‘The Dip’. This part of the park was, in the pre-1860s, a smaller brick pit. In those days, clay for brick making was dug from the nearest suitable field, dotting the landscape around here with little pits.
Jo: Although war time was a traumatic experience for the grown-ups, children have better memories of the playtime opportunities of a rubbish dump in the pre-health and safety era…
Boys playing on Havelock Rec in the evening light (2020-11-24)
Reg’s memory read by David: “When I was a boy, I used to cut across the brickfield and through all the piles of dumped rubbish, as my family lived in Cannon Road, and I attended Raglan Road school.”
Peter’s memory read by Tony: “To younger kids it was the most fantastic playground you could ever imagine, with new material being tipped there on a daily basis! Many of the kids camps were either in the huge patches of Burdock, that used to grow there, or the older ones made quite large more permanent structures out of the abundance of water tanks. And, “God Help You” if you ever went near or touched a camp belonging to another street.”
Phil narrates: The “Last Input” from the Gas Board was in 1950, and their licence was to use the Brick-pit as a landfill site for “Inert, Industrial and Household waste”.
Narrator: Now follow the edge of the vegetation, around the park to the next stop (about half way along).