August 19, 2019
Fountains Abbey
Our latest project is at the wonderful, world-renowned Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal in North Yorkshire. It offers visitors the chance to experience incredible historical architecture within a beautiful rural setting.
The site attracts over 400,000 visitors every year with the addition of new play spaces in 2016 increasing the scope of family offerings on site and encouraging more families to experience its magic.
Our brief here is to enhance the play opportunities with extensions that work in context with the existing structures and sit harmoniously within the natural landscape setting. Overall, we will be developing three new sites around the existing play spaces which will bring a whole new level of adventure whilst helping to refresh, revitalise and connect with the current adventure play offer.
From the existing skyline lookout point, the ruined garden folly on How Hill can be seen across the valley. This tower provides the inspiration for one of the new feature play structures for the play trail.
Split over two levels, the internal play space offers numerous different routes and possibilities for play. One half of the structure is fully wheelchair accessible with small ramps at the entrance and exit leading to a slightly raised deck within the central tower. Within this space sits a number of sensory play items. Next to this, crawl spaces and secret dens are located over two levels and accessed from different points, including a ladder or climbing wall and secret door below. There's even an escape slide from the first level which takes adventurers back down to the ground to start a new route!
We will show you progress from the build when we start working.