Old Haunts Pt 4

The last part of the old haunts is 'The Field'. Some time in 89 the local youth club we used to go to and play on the BBC micro and table tennis table bought us an old wooden quarterpipe. If I remember right it came from a BMXer who lived in Danbury and had it in his front garden and we used to be able to catch glimpses of it as we passed on the school bus. Anyway, for some reason they decided to place it in the corner of the playing field.



The ramp was in this corner, as you can see here:




For some reason they originally put the ramp on the grass, not so good for skateboards. Luckily for us (although not the developers) they were building a housing estate around one side of the field so we 'borrowed' loads of wood and nails and made a runway up to it. After a while we added a flat banks and quarterpipe opposite, it was like the Chin ramp. Kinda. I think we got sick of nailing the warping chipboard runway in to the grass so as soon as they built the new carpark we pretty much took that over. As a sidebar story, they were going to build a concrete park back in the corner where the original ramp was placed and asked for people to submit designs...nothing ever came of it and they ended up just tarmacing it with a basketball hoop. You can see it in the first photo with the banked dirt...I guess they were close to making the bowl at some point and then bailed.




The surface back then was smooth concrete and we cut down the original quarter and over a period of months built driveways, jump ramps, banks, rails...loads of things. People used to travel from Chelmsford down to skate the street course. Sadly the neighbours started to complain and one day the council came down and took almost all the ramps, end of an era.




Long after everyone moved away or quit skating the parish council built a perfect mini ramp that many of the old Bicknacre locals have since come back and skated. It's weird to go there and skate a ramp you would have killed for back then but to be honest, no matter how sketchy the ramps were, we built them and made something happen from nothing. Amazing times.