Kids of the 70's/80's - what did you do playing out that would horrify people today?

[IncompleteSenten]

I grew up in a pit village and we'd play on the pit tip, including round the slurry pond. We'd chuck sticks in and try to get them round the other side, we'd climb up and slide down the tip mounds. I only remember getting chased off once, it's bonkers to think it was all mostly open and unguarded!

There was a big open sewer? Storm? Drain or massive pipe with a grill across it that had been prised off and we used to go in there. I don't really know what it was, just that it was metal and massive and a bit wet and smelly and you could crawl quite a way in.

An old pit tip that time had grassed over but was not all that stable and had a chunk out the side of it. We called it "holey hill" and would sit in the carved out bit and make it bigger.

There was a stream with a big tree next to it. We had a rope tied round a branch and a stick to turn the rope into a swing. One side of the stream had a really steep banking and we had a massive knife and took it in turns to swing as high as possible and stick the knife into the banking. The next person had to swing to get the knife and then swing to put the knife higher up the banking. The winner was the person who got it so high nobody else was able to retrieve it.

Gathering hay from the fields and making a massive pile under a tree (different tree) then climbing the tree and jumping off it onto the hay. Bonus points for fancy jumps.

Playing chicken across the new road (it's still called the new road even though it's been there 40 years now and the old road's been buried for 30)

Climbing onto the row of garages at the bottom of the estate and jumping from one roof to the next.

God, so many!

I was chatting with my mum the other day and was reminiscing about all these games when I noticed my mum had gone absolutely silent.

She had no clue what I'd been doing all that time. She'd assumed I was just in the park. (Nobody played in the park. Who wants proper swings and slides when you've got pit tops, slurry ponds and knife games 🤣)

Behind our house was a small stately home which had been turned into an adult education centre but in the grounds was a folly which had two towers joined by a bridge and a grassed area where the original family would picnic. The towers hadnt been used for years and were really dangerous -- dark, missing steps, crumbling masonary. There were do not enter signs and it was taped off. We used to climb to the top and sit round with our legs dangling off until the gamekeeper chased us off.
All the boys seemed to have bb guns and would shoot at tin cans in the fields. Kids were always getting shot - one boy lost an eye.
Yes to playing on slag heaps, in rivers and hay barns.
We used to climb on top of thed cricket club store house and jump off and use the handles of the big metal grass rollers as a kind of seesaw where we'd try and get it to bounce us onto the top of the roller which was taller than us A bit like this but much larger - it took 2 men to pull it.
^^roller

I fell in a river (couldn't swim) going "fishing" as we use to collect tad poles. Never told my mum and somehow friends managed to get me out I told her a couple of years ago and she was still furious 😂

We used to play on the building site of the estate I live on now.
Also crawled through pipes where ditches ran underneath gateways on my friend's farm.
I walked out family dog for miles on my own from the age of 11 ( countryside) My 60 year old self shudders at my vulnerability but I live to tell the tale.

Playing in the river, walking on the wall of a viaduct hundreds of feet high.
Playing in the streets of London and jumping on and off the Routemaster buses.
Knocking on people's doors and running away.

We scutted on the backs of trucks and buses from one set of lights to the next. We climbed over industrial roofs to get to the bishops gardens at night, we swam in the local canal) still done today), snuck into the cinema every weekend by the side entrance.

That made me gasp out loud and then chuckle. We were absolutely mad, weren’t we? How did we not all die?
We used to go swimming in the nearby lakes which were infested with rats, not so bad you might think except we couldn’t swim!!

We were also obsessed with matches. We used to light fires down a little alley near where we lived. They’d only get so big and then we’d put them out. But one day when I hadn’t been playing out I heard the house next to the alley had caught fire. I never did find out who did it but it wasn’t me, honest !!!

we'd stand on a wall and eat the neighbours Pears. But without picking them so that all the cores were left dangling on the tree.😆

That’s hilarious 😂🤣😂😆🤣

We would knock on all the houses of all the surrounding streets to get old wood for the Bonfire in our local park. This was a self-appointed group of pre-teens who undertook this collection diligently for weeks. Then we’d build the bonfire and guard it so rival park gangs couldn’t steal it or start the fire early. This usually involved creating a bit of a den in the centre of the bonfire and hiding in it until v late at night. God, I shudder now and wonder how none of us got burnt alive.

I did stand on a rusty nail attached to a plank once; it went through the sole of my shoe and came out through the top of my foot and I had to go to A&E.

The bonfire itself was a huge community event when it was lit on 5th Nov but no parent or other adult questioned how it had come about 🤔

We drank from cattle troughs or the river.
We were chased out of the woods by the gamekeeper (several times).
We paddled a leaky rubber dinghy down the river a few miles, dragged it out, blew it up and paddled back. It sagged like a hammock.
We dammed the stream.
Played in floodwater, played on ice, played in building sites (no fencing then) .

@IncompleteSenten

For bonfire night knocking on strangers doors asking for penny for a guy fawks night,

Maybe Bob a Job boys scouts doing odd 🤔 jobs in the neighbourhood.

The Brook. Now this may sound like a pretty, rippling, crystal clear stream of magical water flowing through an enchanted area, but no dear reader, it was a stagnant strip of water at the back of the British Leyland car factory in Cowley, Oxford. It was like crack to us kids in 1974.
We had to jump across it without getting what we called a ‘Booty’ - basically ending up in this filthy, brown water.
We were forbidden to play at ‘The Brook’.
We ignored such instructions.
Going home with your socks and shoes ruined was not a good thing.
Then there was the motorway underpass - at the bottom of our Primary school field, a mere fence was all that existed between us and the A34. That fence had a hole just big enough for the average 8 year old to squeeze through and on our bottoms edge along the steep grass bank and sit on the concrete wall of the underpass and wave at the lorries.

I was a child of in the 1960s, when children were allowed to roam around unsupervised by adults from a very young age.

I used to be sent on errands by my parents. I clearly remember being sent on numerous occasions to the tobacconist to get some pipe tobacco and a box of matches for my dad. "An ounce of St Bruno and a box of Swan Vestas, please." I would have been aged about 6 when first so dispatched!

It wasn't at all unusual for pre-school aged children to be out playing in the street, fields, woods, playground, recreation ground etc with their primary school siblings for most of the day.
My sisters and I and our friends used often to be out all day during the school holidays. We would take a few biscuits and a small bottle of orange squash and that was "lunch".

Our favourite places were:
The hay barn at a farm about a mile away. We used to climb up to the top of the bales and move them around to make tunnels that we could crawl through. We could have suffocated if they had ever collapsed!

A culvert/storm drain that ran underneath the main road. We used to crawl through it.

Some woods about a mile from home, where we used to sometimes take some matches, pretend to be camping and light fires.

A stream/small river, about half a mile away, that we used to swing ourselves across on a rope tied to a tree branch. Sometimes we caught small fish (minnows and sticklebacks) and frog spawn in jam jars.

The streets on our housing estate, which was all newly built. Our house was one of the first to be occupied. When I was very young, about 4 or 5, I used to love playing on the building site with my sister. There were no fences or anything to stop anyone wandering all over the place, so we used to have great fun running around the partially constructed houses, climbing up the stacks of bricks, jumping in the piles of sand, climbing up ladders to get to the first floor of the houses that didn't yet have a staircase. I don't recall there being any warning signs - but if there were I was too young to be able to read them anyway so they were irrelevant to me!

It's amazing I'm still here!

Children's lives are so different now, so restricted and protected. I do feel that I lived a uniquely privileged childhood in many ways. It was post war, the country was in recovery. We were very hard up (very under privileged materially), food was very dull, we had next to nothing in terms of possessions - but we had so much freedom!

Went off alone on my bike cycling to the stables and back 8 miles each way leaving and coming home in the dark from about ten years old.
At the end of the weekend rode the riding school ponies bareback leading one either side on roads with no lights or high viz back to the fields they grazed in during the week. Then picked up in the stables transit van which had holes in the floor you could see the road through, all us kids crammed in the back no seats or seatbelts.
Great times. But things could have gone very wrong.

River swimming, racing notoriously unpredictable horses across fields, carrying (and getting cuts from) rusty penknives from an early age, falling out of trees in remote areas.

That fence had a hole just big enough for the average 8 year old to squeeze through and on our bottoms edge along the steep grass bank and sit on the concrete wall of the underpass and wave at the lorries.

Oh God we used to do this too but I don’t remember how we got to the steep concrete bit, so I must have been really young 😩

What the hell were our parents thinking? Can you imagine these days? “Mum, I’m just going out to play under the M25”, “Ok, love” 🤣😂🤣
I mean obviously my Mother didn’t know but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have cared if she did. Even the most loving parents were flipping negligent in those days 😆

Husband used to enter burnt out houses and walk around with his mates.

Playing squashed fly - lying down in the middle of the road!! Until cars came along and started honking their horns.

Nicky Nacky Nine Doors

Going round to the other local school (they sometimes had different holidays to us) and shooting kids with water pistols through the fence.

Ouija boards

Breaking into an old abandoned house

We used to climb up to the top of the bales and move them around to make tunnels that we could crawl through. We could have suffocated if they had ever collapsed!

That reminds me, we used to roll along the roads on those cable drum things which we took from a works place around the corner.

These things. They were as big as us fgs and we’d roll along the road on them or try to run on top of one like a circus act before inevitably smashing to the ground 🤦‍♀️

The end wall of our estate was two foot thick and made of granite rocks. The kids of the estate spent many happy hours packing German bangers and quarter-sticks into crevices in the mortar to try and blast a hole in the wall.

Decades later, that wall looks as good as new

Playing in derelict houses with my cousin, exploring the contents, walking to school by with a similar age girl to primary school at age 5. Hardly saw my mum except at dinner.

hitch hiking, we even hitched from Surrey to somerset to meet some random guys we met on holiday.

I used to walk across the dodgiest fields to get to the stables to work (I was 13). I’d be wearing a short top and jodhpurs. It was in a really bad area with gangs of people hanging around at the gates I’d climb to get in. Told my parents I went the long way around and then would walk home that way telling my parents I had a lift because I wanted to listen to the top 40 on my Walkman🙈

We moved into a new-build in 1990, and my brother and I had hours of fun playing in the half-built houses opposite. You could walk upstairs in this shell of a house with no roof and mess about with all the bricks and other stuff that had been left overnight. No barriers at all to getting in!

Also played in and on heaps of rubbish on The Field which was the last bit to be built over.

Spent hours hanging around with friends at a desolate and rather isolated patch of water we called the pond, which was a magnet for strange men. Thankfully none ever bothered us.

My parents are hyper-cautious and sensible people, but had no issue with any of this!

You’ve just reminded me of being aged around 9 and going into a field of horses with my friend. I got kicked on the knee by one of the horses (completely my own fault for being in there) and had a horrendous bruise and a lot of pain but daren’t tell my mum and dad for fear of the bollocking for being in that field 😂 Still got a dodgy knee to this day.

There was a scrapyard directly behind my house so I’d play in all the old cars and bounce on the sheets of asbestos…

Behind the scrapyard was the old brickworks which was very overgrown but was an amazing playground of broken bricks and chimney pots to clamber over, this included a massive clay pit death trap pond that was “skated” on when it iced over.

Swimming in the quarry, using an old scaffold plank as a diving board.

squashing coins on the railway tracks.

I had no stranger danger, if I had nobody to play with I’d ride my bike to the local pond and sit with the fishermen and share my sweets and crisps. Poor blokes probably just wanted some peace and quiet but ended up having me yapping their ears off!