When plans for a new adventure playground in Oxford were announced, children were quick to help.
They didn’t sit back and wait for workmen to do the job – they got stuck in themselves.
They helped clear the site, removed rubbish from a stream and cut up fallen tree trunks.
When the work near Spindleberry Close, Blackbird Leys, was completed, they had not only a new playground but the satisfaction of having done much of the work themselves.
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The playground had been suggested in the mid-1960s, but it had taken 10 years to get the scheme off the ground.
When the Oxford Mail photographer visited the site in May 1976, children were working hard, enjoying a little playtime and preparing for a summer opening.
A play leader was soon to be appointed and plans were in the pipeline to make the site even more popular for youngsters - it would eventually include an overhead cable runway, concrete tunnels and swings.
Organisers also put out an appeal for volunteer helpers and for support from building firms for materials such as steel cable, concrete piping, ropes and wood.
Two years later, however, there was concern that children could stray from the playground and drown in a nearby ‘cesspool’.
Parents appealed to Oxford City Council to put a fence around the pool or fill it in.
Janet Lewis, of Pegasus Road, said: “Kids come from all over the estate to play here. They love the adventure playground, but it’s only yards from the pool, and the kids hang over the sides.”
She said the pool often smelled “and must be a health hazard”. It was full of sludge, bits of wood, metal, broken glass and overgrown with weeds.
She said her son, Michael, aged nine, had nearly drowned two years earlier after falling in.
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His brother Steven, 13, jumped in to save him, but could not get him up the steep sides, and other boys had to help.
Her neighbour, Jacqueline Graves, said: “I worry all the time. It should be filled in or turned into a properly supervised pool for the kids to play in.”
Deputy city engineer Ron Frampton promised to raise the issue with the Blackbird Leys Adventure Playground Association, which was responsible for the site.
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In 2018, the Blackbird Leys Adventure Playground group used an £8,855 National Lottery grant for a project to ‘celebrate the diversity’ of the children who attend its after-school and holiday activities.
Secretary Sue Price said at the time staff wanted to run the project to share the vast array of different cultures of students and their families.
The project featured parents coming in to teach the pupils, aged 8-13, how to cook traditional dishes.
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