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The life and work of Lady Allen of Hurtwood.

Part two
‘Children are more complicated than Ke les.’
We join Lady Allen as she was travelling to Norway in a rickety old army Dakota on the 4th march 1946 for the playwork part of her life story.
On a fuelling stop in Copenhagen, the head of the Froebel Training School whisked her away to see Emdrup. From here on I will use her own words
as they deserve sharing. Page 196’ Memoires of an Uneducated Lady’

She goes on to describe the remainder of her tour which resulted in her establishing an interna onal organisa on with a focus on early childhood
educa on, how this formed into OMEP which was supported by UNESCO and informed the work of UNICEF for whom she worked for a year as
informa on liaison officer. She had to give up being chair of 9 other major and influen al commi ees to find the me to fulfil this post. She used her
role, among other things, to raise a budget for an enquiry into the plight of disabled children across Europe as well as those who had been orphaned
or made homeless by the ravages of the recently ended war.
She describes having tea with Queen Mary (who she had last seen when she was very cross with Marjorie because of an unfortunate incident
resul ng in some unfla ering pictures of her taken during a tree plan ng ceremony.) She makes a flee ng men on of the passing into law of the
original Children’s Act only four years a er her ini al le er to The Times, which started the whole demand for the inquiry which led to the act.
She sold her beloved house, managed to find another property which she oversaw the conversion of and created a garden for. She disposed of CAs
library to a university in America. Wrote two gardening books illustrated by Susan Jellicoe, and then she took up a new campaign.
The campaign for adventure playgrounds.
Lady Allen starts the chapter on playgrounds with a rather curious rider, she is trying to give a truthful account of her own experiences and she
acknowledges that her mania for keeping things going would be fu le if it were not for the great efforts of a good many people. This sounds to me as
if there were disputes about who did what and who could claim what in the adventure Playground movement of the 1970’s don’t you recognise the
note of diplomacy in that tone?
Following the picture post ar cle in 1946 there was a wave of interest in these new spaces. She wrote for a pamphlet for the Under14s council and a
playground was started in Camberwell under the auspices of Cambridge house. It lasted for 3 years before the land was developed.
She never saw that one but became very involved with one in Clydesdale Road, North Kensington. Ruth Li lewood had watched children playing on
a bombsite next to her house and it took a good deal of nego a on with landlords and hos le neighbours as well as fundraising to open the site in
1951. Marjorie was on the commi ee of this playground. She ‘managed to scrounge a hut for the playground and found a young man to be the
playground leader.’
Because the space was so urgently needed, the site was opened up before the water board had put in a standpipe and before the interna onal
voluntary service for peace came to clear away the dangerous rubble. There was loud mouthed opposi on, but ‘the children poured in’.
March 17th 1952
‘It had been the inten on to focus on children aged 5 -10 but older and younger children were eager to come in to and experience shows it is
possible to cater for a very mixed group. There were fights par cularly over possession of tools but real crises were rare. It was surprising to see
how many ac vi es were going on at close quarters, without serious fric on even when the playground was filled to capacity. Youngest children
riding down slopes in a trolley or digging in a somewhat aimless fashion with s cks and trowels; while the older boys were working at pick and
shovel excava on the girls were playing some housekeeping games around the huts and various mixed groups were making bonfires or hammering
boards or diligently helping the leader to construct a brick seat against a boundary wall.’
The second leader created such a friendly atmosphere that he disarmed local cri cism.
‘It is evident that the help children get from the Play-leader is useful to them emo onally as well as prac cally, in a child’s world a friendly adult who
exerts a minimum of authority and is generous with his me and a en on, maybe something of a rarity; and the children respond as if they have
been wai ng for just this sort of friendship.’ 1953 ma
In these two pieces of wri ng Lady Allen spells out clearly for us the nature of an Adventure Playground and the role of the playworker. Here are two
vast areas of knowledge and informa on that we s ll pursue and research and write about and grasp to capture the essence of, wri en in the
minutes of the first English playground with a proper suppor ng structure.
This site was a ¼ acre and had a budget of £400/year. When Lady Allen saw an ar cle in the mes on juvenile crime, she no doubt remembered the
reac ons of the people of Emdrup to the new junk playground, the eager belief that they had that it had put an end to juvenile delinquency.

She responded with another of her ’le ers to the mes.’

.’.. Municiple playgrounds are o en as bleak as barrack squares and just as boring. You are not allowed to build a fire, you would head straight for
juvenile court if you started to dig up the expensive tarmac to make a cave, there are no bricks or planks to build a house, no workshops for
carpentry, mechanical work, pain ng or modelling and of course, no trees to climb...’
She does it again ! A perfect cri que of the standard ill informed municipal play offer and a clear explana on of the effects on those spaces of the
children they are intended to serve. (This is one very good reason why this woman sits behind me in mee ngs politely clearing her throat
occasionally ...)
And for her next stroke of genius?
A unifying body to help recongnise and establish the work of the adventure playgrounds and playworkers.
‘Many a empts had been made to improve play grounds but had failed when met with problems similar to those we encountered Clysdale road, It
showed an urgent need for the pooling of experience. Doubts about the aims of adventure playgrounds and difficul es with the prac cal means
were out of all propor on because the pioneers never talked to each another . the two groups in Camberwell and Kensington had never even known
that the second group existed.’
A mee ng at the NPFA (now Fields in Trust) was called for all interested par es. During this mee ng it became clear that while there was huge
support for the scheme, most people did not fully understand the role of the play-leader. Lady Allen had strong mixed feelings about this lack of
understanding, she knew that ‘the right person was the key to success’. And wanted to see leaders properly paid.
The NPFA agreed to publish another of Her li le pamphlets, that she had prepared earlier.
The playgrounds had up to this point been called waste material or junk playgrounds,. She thought they deserved be er and invented the name
Adventure Playgrounds which became the tle of her pamphlet. (As she points out is used around the world to this day’) When asked to define it for
the Oxford English Dic onary in not more than seven words, she said. ’a crea ve playground with tools and waste material.’
Again there was a flood of response to this pamphlet and she saw that a central organisa on was definitely needed to ‘canalize all this enthusiasm
into construc ve work’.
A mee ng was called in K&C Town Hall and about 200 people interested in star ng a new adventure playground a ended. The NPFA offered some
support and it was agreed that a na onal co-ordina ng body should be set up. It was not clear however, what the NPFA had actually offered. There
was a need for money for administra ve support, printed informa on and a centralized record keeping system for technical advice.... The
Clydesdale Road commi ee had managed to keep on top of this work load so far but quite rightly an cipated a growing demand. There were other
concerns in her mind about the understanding that the NPFA had for the concept of Adventure Playgrounds, but it was thought be er to set up under
‘the umbrella’ that they offered than to try to establish a brand new organisa on. So the NPFA Playground Commi ee was established and Lady
Allen with her two women ac vist colleagues went along to the first mee ng.
it was made clear that only two of them would be welcomed onto the commi ee even though it was they who had the first hand knowledge and
experience of running an adventure playground. The women dealt with this by refusing to leave the mee ng. But they con nued to be referred to
by the diminu ve collec ve noun of ‘the ladies’.
Eventually two sites were found one in south and one in north London and an appointment was made to answer enquiries about the Adventure
Playground Movement. In addi on a new adventure Playground opened up in Crawley.
It was about this me that Lady Allen received a proposal of marriage from Herbert Morrisson which despite, his being a dear friend, she refused.
She and Polly took a brief but idyllic French holiday together, which I men on only to be able to tell how Polly rejected a deligh ully bucolic picnic
site because it had ‘ too many nigh ngales’.
Back to work in England and speeches in areas where the Adventure Playground movement had made brave starts. To Liverpool where a leader had
been appointed, Grimsby, where a piece of dock land had been donated by a mber firm, and Bristol where the proposed site has trees and a
stream.
She says, ‘ The people who came to hear me speak were enthusiasts. They were just as disillusioned as I , but they took it for granted that exis ng
play spaces would become adventure playgrounds if a couple of concrete pipes were cemented down and an old trac on engine brought in. This is
not so. Children want above all things that they can move about and use for all sorts of purposes.
She wanted to make sure that playgrounds had plenty of adaptable materials and a good playground leader. This was a problem because there was
nothing to model this role upon. It was u erly new. Also there was a groundswell of feeling that whilst the hours were awkward- the supervision
du es were light and that the job therefore did not command a reasonable rate of pay. I guess the familiar remarks about ‘ge ng paid to play with
kids’ must have started at about this me and con nue to this day. Certainly in many organisa ons playworkers are s ll paid an embarrassingly small
wage and are u erly undervalued by almost every one. These first play-leaders were found in surprising numbers, but were not paid a living wage.
Lady Allen was never pleased with the name Play-leaders which ‘suggested power rather than influence.’ I do not know if she ever came across the
term playworkers, but it certainly seems to address her qualms.
In 1953 the LCC offered a space in Lambeth for an Adventure Playground site. They agreed to a peppercorn rent and to fence the area. It was the site
of a bombed out school on Lollard street and, although the local residents had been asking for it to be turned into a playground, only two were
willing to serve on a commi ee. The rest burst into complaints whenever anything went wrong. Lady Allen says that she felt that they did not make
clear enough before the site was created, exactly what an Adventure Playground was.
The site opened in April 1955 and although the fence was not complete there was a leader in post; there is a deligh ul descrip on of him that
featured in an ar cle in a weekly magazine.
‘ a man with no pretensions- just an knack of handling children... from the smallest Lambeth child upwards every one calls him ‘arry,. He is a bulky,
happy man with a turned up nose, spectacles like Billy BUNTERS A RUMPLED SHIRT, A TEAR IN HIS TROUSERS AND ARMY BOOTS LACED WITH STRING’.
(NB playworker chic is born.) ‘ nothing annoys harry. Nothing hurries him. He is diffident with prim li le girls, as large men always are he is on terms
of understand and level friendship with the tough li le boys and the faintly hos le older ones. He laughs all over his broad face if you suggest he
‘understands’ the children. ‘nobody understands anybody else’ he says’ i think i just sympathise with them.’
His job was a hard one... imagine being the first playworker with a ‘faintly hos le’ community and a commi ee mee ng every two weeks consis ng
of not only the brave locals but the tled and the former service men and mayors and such like. All of them depending you and you alone to manage
this radical new social experiment.
t wasn’t l some me later that they managed to get hold of an old hut which proved expensive to reconstruct (Over (£1000) but it did provide them
with lavatories electricity and indoor play space, a tools store carpenters bench and books for the children. (A rarity at this me remember. Ra oning
was s ll in place and there had been a a first world war followed by a depression then a second world war. People had nothing. Resources were more
than scarce they were not there at all. For children to have access to books was treasure indeed.)
The children painted the hut and the signage and took great pride in it... again this is a tradi on that we take for granted in our work now, but
imagine the shock of a child painted sign on a child painted building. The girls cleaned and swept the building, because they chose to, and outside all
the kids began digging and building and demolishing and cooking on fires it looked a mess. It was referred to locally as ‘The Ruins’ an eyesore.
The children seemed to have adored it and it a racted not only school aged children but ny to ers and well as older kids already employment,
(Dont forget that the school leaving age at this me was s ll 14/15 years. ) the groups mixed harmoniously and gravitated toward their own spaces
and interests without impinging on each other’s play. (How great it would be for playground designers to a end to this now.) When the older kids
said they wanted to build a sandpit for the li le ones, they worked hard to construct it and then spent a couple of weeks playing in it themselves.
Lady Allen remarks that she was ‘ glad that these tough young men were catching p on a pleasure that they had missed. An adventure playground is
about the only place where that can be done.’
There was always a shortage of building materials and the playground gladly accepted dona ons, in one case a lorry load of old LCC blackboards.
There was a mistake. There was an a empt to build a play mountain. Several lorry loads of top soil were dumped onto the site, unfortunately it was
London clay and whilst the children enjoyed the po ery and mud slides, the ruining of clothes and homes became too much of a problem and it had
to be taken away and turfed over.
Harry took a great deal of cri cism from locals and was flooded with good ideas from over helpful commi ee members. So another learning point
was discovered. The commi ee members made sugges ons about the site to Harry through only one commi ee member. Is this the start of good
management prac ces unique to the Adventure Playground movement?
The site was presented with an old life boat which became a huge favourite and suggested imagina ve and adventurous narra ves unlike and old
van which was just pushed around un l it broke. The site was learning about what worked and what didn’t in their situa on.
Having invested so much energy in the publicity campaign to disseminate informa on about adventure playgrounds, the site now found itself
inundated with journalists and TV crews. Apparently the children enjoyed this for a while but eventual it interrupted the ‘business in their affairs.’
Lady Allen found the press coverage that Lollard received, mixed in content and quality. Her main messages were s ll simple. ‘ A massive supplyof
materials and a resourceful and sympathe c leader.’
Harry le the site, he had been working lo hours in a stressful job for li le money and apparently trying to bring up a family. He was replaced by Joe
Benjamin, who stayed for while before moving onto the Grimsby Playground. He found that Lollard was run with too much outside interference and
not enough involvement from local people. This cri cism was held to be true by Lady Allen but she wonders about the right thing to do in a case like
this, where local people were s ll generally unforthcoming about suppor ng the site through a management commi ee. Should the outsiders step
away from the project it would simply fold. A difficult situa on and one that was much replicated in the early years. She points out that in the
places where adventure playgrounds were most needed the people who did take on some form of public service were involved in the unions or
local government,( to that list, I would add church work. no nghill adventure playground and much of the inspira onal playground work in that area
was heavily supported by the local ecumenical church consor um. ) She suggests that Joe did very well with the playground in Grimsby ge ng local
support but ended up doing much of the work that should have been done by a suppor ve commi ee.
Another staggering and per nent bit of informa on coming from this me was the fact that in the face of complaints that the Adventure Playground
was dangerous, Captain Bra of the NPFA and the treasurer of Lollard, managed to get Lloyds of London to insure the site for claims up to £50,000 for
£5 per year. They were ‘impressed by the fact that a responsible adult was with the children and by the argument that the children who were deeply
engrossed in what they were doing are less likely to have accidents than those who are driven boredom to use fixed equipment in ways for which it
was never intended. A er more than 20 years, she says’ no parent has ever made a claim against a adventure Playground..’ would that that were s ll
true.

The commi ee was joined in 1957 by Drummond Abernethy who became and remained an enthusiast for adventure playgrounds. (This is the only
men on made in her book of Drummond, who is cited by many in the old guard of the playworld to have been the leading mo vator in the
adventure Play movement. I wonder if this is what her caveat at the top of the playgrounds chapter is about?
When Jo Benjamin le the site it was taken over by Pat Turner, who wrote a fascina ng book about the experience called ‘Something Extraordinary’
and by all accounts it was extraordinary. He had no rules, but clear standards for the playground. The children heard classical music and he played
the violin as he wondered a round the site. He encouraged the kids to be a greater part of the neighbourhood which broke down many of the
barriers between the adventure playground and the community. he encouraged the craze for camping in tents and cooking meals over open fires.
This was a significant factor in the lives of many kids whose parents were working when they had their mid day lunch break. They were able to come
to the playground at lunch me and cook their own meals.
Gardening took off in a big way and the children planted and tended their plots and learned how to make compost from the le -overs of the
Lambeth Walk market.
The site acquired another hut which was used for pain ng and jiving and poetry wri ng. The children went on to produce a newspaper and an
opere a! The under fives had a supervised playgroup session funded by the save the children fund. Lady Allen was keen to maximise the use of the
site all year round, which she saw as another way of making adventure playgrounds unique.
In about 1960 the lease ran out on Lollard and the Adventure playground closed and another school was built on the site.
As far as I am aware this is about the closest we have of an adventure playground biography. Certainly I have heard that when Nils Norman was
visi ng sites trying to collate informa on for his catalogue of London adventure playgrounds he found few people with any real sense of the history
of their site beyond a few notes and photos fading away in show boxes in the playground a cs.

She says that it took many years to argue that an adventure playworkers salary should be on a parrwith other social workers. And she was concerned
about qualifica ons and training. ‘Good leaders with an ins nct for following children’s interests are born not made ‘she says’ ‘but there are some
skills that can be taught.’
She undertook a fact finding visit to Stockholm 1954, and saw how their parks had play spaces open to the children at any me, without fences and
using a great deal more space than the adventure playgrounds had. They were staffed by play-leaders occasionally when they opened up a store and
supported to children in a slightly different play experience. She thought that this should be shared in the UK , so she re-invented for them the term
‘Play parks,’ wrote an ar cle and a pamphlet (the ideal way to share informa on . many of my pamphlets have reached sales of up to 50,000)
The LCC were persuaded to start looking at the concept of play parks and Pat Turner, formerly of Lollard, moved to the LCC parks department and
was put in charge. he made a great success of the play parks and the one o clock clubs that went along with them. Another mission completed.
Lady Allen then did a piece of work with the Rowntree founda on on play provision for under fives living in high rise blocks. The research and
published results highlighted shocking facts which illustrated that li le children had nowhere to play with their peers. This received wide spread
publicit., But that was not enough for her. Lady Allen wanted to do something construc ve about this situa on and wrote a pamphlet ‘design for
play’. 1961. In 1965 there was another pamphlet ’ new playgrounds’ looking at a greater play offer for all children.
Then she men ons a li le something that she wrote to help the planners and architects and other involved in public housing who were becoming
increasingly worried by the lack of play provision for high rise children. This is the incredible ‘Planning for play’ 1968. it is an u erly comprehensive
guide to playwork theory as it was worded at that me. Our language has changed since, but every one of the concepts she describes, we are
rediscovering and claiming for ourselves. She gives illustra ons on playable spaces as applied to housing estates and nearby open parks, she
describes the playful use of sloap spaces. She encapsulated deligh ully the inspira on and wonder of the adventure playground, and writes clearly
and in unsen mental terms about the vital need for adventure playgrounds which welcome children with disabili es and addi onal needs and
describes how to create an adventure playground which will do this work. She writes in clear and unclu ered language about the philosophy
behind each element of play design and illustrates, from her extensive experience across the world the inspired design solu ons to the prac cal
problems of crea ng a sandpit, plan ng, and the management of a playground. She slates play ground designers who design to adult desires and try
to fit children into those ideals. She fights for the aesthe c element of a playspace and for the comfort of the children and the adults who accompany
them in their playing. She describes in concise and unpreten ous terms the need to preserve the wild spaces in a city, a concept which has recently
been marketed as ‘liminal space’ by some preten ous play upstart.
This book should be made compulsory reading for any one in play design or play work or local authority or RSLs, community development and parks
departments. it is ,by far the best book on the prac cal issues about play and playspaces and how to support them that I have ever read and it should
be re-published at once.
In it there is a plea from Lady Allen for a centralised home for informa on and research about playspace design and theory. One senses that she feels
that her book should not have o have been necessary, because this centre was proposed by her in the very earliest days of the involvement of the
NPFA in the business of play.’ It is largely because of this lack of a centralised resource on play that local authori es and landscape designers and
architects keep on , year a er year making the same unsa sfactory play spaces, the same mistakes. It is because we have not given them this
informa on that we have’. Her tone is clear. She wants to communicate these things she knows so much about and has worked so hard to do well.
She writes without ego but with passion.

She was invited by the UN to contribute her panoramic view to a discussion about ‘playground ac vi es, objec ves and leadership’. To cut a long
story short, it was as a result of that mee ng that in 1963, the Interna onal Play Associa on was formed. Surprised?... no of course you are not.
She describes how adventure playgrounds all over the world have taken on different characteris cs, some are very concerned with building others
with animals, some are free and are accused of anarchism and some are over regimented and cannot bear to see children engaged in aimless ac vity
so impose ac vi es more purposeful to adults upon them (she cannot agree with this.) she is bemused by the fact that urban architects and planners
of her day seem to have no interest in the success or failure of the playspaces they construct,. An engineer designing a ke le will worry at the
problem it un l it pours right, she says. ‘ It is true that children are more complicated than ke les and there is no absolute way to prove the social
and psychological value of playgrounds.... but my approach has been to try anything that has a germ of interest, if it works, splendid. If it fails, scrap it
and try something else.’

In 1965 She embarked on a lecture tour of the states, she did 18 speeches in 11 days, had tea with ‘Mrs Johnson at the white house (how does she
make that sound so parochial?) gave a lecture at the wonderful Guggenheim museum of art on ‘Playgrounds, the Emerging Art form’ . She was
thrown a grand banquet on her birthday on May 10th. The US press loved her calling her ‘the no nonsense dowager and the filler-in of gaps.’
It is at this point in her autobiography, that she men ons the crea on of LAPA which was an umbrella body for London adventure playground and of
which she was the chair. The aim of the group was to help new sites avoid the mistakes of the past, this sounds simple but involved a great deal of
informa on gathering and sharing. The organisa on was funded by ILEA the Inner London Educa on Authority, who also funded block grants for the
salaries of adventure playground leaders and assistants. Read that again. Training and trainee placements were organise for those coming new to
playwork and peripate c playworkers were employed to support and work with staff on each of the (1974) 61 - and rising- adventure playgrounds.
The total number reached about 80 in london by the me that thatcher closed down ILEA and there was no longer any permi ed local government
support for this movement.
And one last thing..
‘I saw another gap...’ in 1964 a friend of Pollys’ had a child with a profound disability and Lady Allen suddenly realised that disabled children were
not accessing the adventure playgrounds that were blossoming all over London. These children and their families felt the stress caused by this lack
very acutely. So she did what you would expect, set up a trial scheme to see if it was possible and what was needed for disabled children to play. She
set up 5 of these projects in different parts of London, and saw them running with real success. So she set about star ng an adventure playground
where disabled children could come in the term me and the holidays. She ‘became the chairman of a small commi ee to find a site fundraise plan
buildings and landscaping and interest parents doctors and educa onalists.’ Not so much really.
She found a site, drove the bull dozer, modelled streambeds and splash pools and sandpits. The building was designed with the advice of all
specialists a ended to. Wide doorways, a kitchen and spacious playroom big enough for children in wheel chairs and a high number of adults to
support them.
‘In February 1970 the experimental playground opened in the gardens of the rectory in Old Church street Chelsea. Peaceful and spacious with walls
of old mellow brick there was a comfor ng sense of enclosure without shu ering out the busy life going on outside in old church street.’
She believes this was the first ever Adventure playground designed specifically for disabled children. ( please read Adventure playgrounds for
handicapped children for a complete descrip on of this site.) at the me of wri ng her autobiography in 1974 , She had found another three sites to
develop for HAPA across London. There were eventually 6 that were run by the organisa on she established to co-ordinated the sites. Since that
me many of them have lost her ini al inspira on as well as the ability to work inclusively, through a lack of engagement in the adventure
playground agenda and an understanding of playwork in the current umbrella organisa on.
My own wonderful Chelsea site (Successor to the original old Rectory site,) is where I first met lady Allen some 11 years a er her death. Well you
didn’t think a li le thing like her own mortality would get in the way of her work did you? (as she says, the passage of me has never yet restricted
my opportuni es for interes ng work.)
In a moving end to her book, she talks about the joys of her busy life and scaled down joys of her quieter days. She wishes that she could visit her
beloved surrey hills again and indeed her daughter Polly showed me a photo of her taken beside a li le caravan on those hills take only a couple of
weeks before her death in 1976.
Her closing words in the memoires of an uneducated lady?
‘The work I have chosen to do is never finished’.
And that, my dears, is her legacy.