The play area is the second phase of AAB architect’s Duke’s Meadows masterplan, and is funded by the BIG Lottery and Marathon Trust. The brief was for an accessible play area in a natural landscape, and was developed with pupils from the local primary school and the Croft Centre for disabled children.

The objective is to provide a stimulating landscape in which children can invent their own games, including sculpted landform to create hollows and mounds (like a dried-up river bed), play equipment integrated with the slope of the ground, and planting to create enclosure and a range of sensory experience with the theme of water. Natural materials and found objects, such as boulders, tree trunks, recycled equipment and a redundant water fountain are incorporated in the scheme. A path cuts diagonally across the site, with a curved edge on one side that defines places for seating and enables access to the hollows and mounds.

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