Worcestershire
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Blakedown Primary
Design and Make a Medieval Village 2005 & today
- Price Range
- Design
- Preparation
- Build
- Today c. £30,000
- 3 days
- 3 days
- 3 weeks
Project Overview
This project came in 2 phases. In the first phase, a ‘creative play area at Blakedown’, Year 5 were supervised in constructing a ‘medieval village’ in a part of their school grounds. The school has the advantage of being set on stony dry ground, and the grass is semi-accessible all year. For the village, we made some permanent dens & some steeple roofed huts, with a storytelling circle and a maypole as the ‘market cross’.
In phase 2, a permanent footpath was added, connecting the school to the car park, via the all weather gazebo. Quality conifers and other beautiful trees were planted to create that long term ‘sense of place’. The bonus with this project was that the grounds maintenance contractor took care to carefully mow around trees, ensuring their long term evolution. Today this site is very special for creative play – the original features have mostly degraded, although the old seating area remains. What is left now, are the maturing trees adding an incredible ambiance to the school, and providing as many learning and play opportunites as the original project.
Result
The long term evolution of the site is evidence of an excellent investment. The money was spent once in 2005/6, and today the school has all the benefits of a beautiful landscape for learning and play.
Original project 2006 featured a new footpath and timber structure. The installation included the avenue trees and fruit trees around the gazebo. The brick edged veg beds in the foreground were a school project after we finished on site.
Same view 2021. Interesting to see the veg beds have been totally neglected, yet those fruit trees have really grown well. This is why we always recommend trees and long term potential over annual vegetables. For further info, see our blog post on 'Food Forests and Forest Gardening'.
