Did your school have a metal climbing frame in the gym hall? What did you call it?

[BooksWithPrettyCovers]

In the depths of Glasgow, we had a Kelvin frame and I presumed this was a universal term... DH is claiming that it is not and Google isn't backing me up.

It's like the dinner school debate all over again

It was wooden and we called it the gym racks.

Apparatus - as a child, and a teacher

Apparatus - London

The apparatus. Wheeled out on hinges from the wall of the hall and secured in place with some sort of shakey hinge thing in the floor. Had ropes too. East Sussex.

Apparatus here too - south west

Apparatus 1980s Midlands

The A frames, which were set up and connected with padded blue thin bars that you had to move along.

I absolutely LOVED it when it was PE and the A frames came out!

Primary school, South Manchester, mid 80's

Yes, apparatus too. 1980s Kent.

The apparatus. Very rarely used. The exact same equipment is still there 15 years later.

apparatus - South Wales, eighties. We never used it. I’d have loved to, I loved gymnastics.

"Wall apparatus"

The apparatus or the wall bars.

I work in a school now, and we refer to it as the apparatus.

Beyond excited if the apparatus came out !!!

Wall bars - North East

The apparatus was separate equipment that you could make a course from.

The apparatus. I loved hanging upside down on the rope ladder...

Yup. Apparatus, only recall it being brought out properly a couple of times during my entire primary schooling.

Otherwise we used a set-up made up by the teacher using benches and a horse.

We called it the apparatus (like appar-ah-tus) in Scotland. When I went to live in England I thought the kids were so posh because they called it appar-ay-tus

The apparatus (Sheffield then Midlands)

Also apparatus, Norfolk.

Apparatus or wall bars.
I remember one child zipped straight to the top, stretched up to the ceiling and started pushing up the polystyrene squares in the roof!

Where are my fellow weegies? Someone back me up!

Wall bars.

I think I used them twice is 14 years of state education.

Or, as a (competitive) table tennis player who often played in school halls “those bloody things” as in “the ball has got trapped behind those bloody things yet again”. Was used much then as one person had to climb up to the top to see where the ball had gone so that they could direct the hand of the other player to try and rescue the ball.

‘The apparatus’ - north west England.

The apparatus was the metal freestanding thing that got put out sometimes, A frames, bit shaky. The wall bars were the wooden ones that swung out from the wall. Also the ropes. My friend Shane used to climb to the top of the ropes and then hang upside down, no hands, with the rope clutched beneath her thighs, while the teacher panicked below her but unable to reach.

My children's school recently got rid of their wall bars. They had been banned from use for years, I don't think the children knew what they were for!

Did anyone else dangle upside down from the long cross bar by the crook of their knees for ages, having a good look around?