The Mighty Slide Of Stephens Park

A Memory of Welling.

When very young I used to go with my father to the huge allotments opposite the parade of shops in Wrotham Road.
It was always on a Sunday when the hut shop was open for the sale of seed, fertiliser and garden accessories, and it was where he bought seed potatoes and Growmore for his vegetable bed. Then one weekend we discovered chains
on the main gate and the allotments no longer open. Not long after the whole site was cleared and sown with grass seed, to become the grasslands of Stephens Park, a beloved place I would spend many happy hours of childhood.
On one side a children's playground was installed complete with swings, roundabout, see-saw, dome umbrella, rocking horse and the American swing. What it didn't have though, was a slide. That is until one glorious day when the council came to install one. But this was no common or garden slide. It was a huge and wonderful installation that to me seemed as tall as a house. It was an overnight sensation and drew children from far and wide, who often had to queue for a turn to climb its many steps to the lofty summit, ready for what was the ecstatic journey down to the bottom. It didn't take long for kids to discover smearing the shiny metal chute with candle-grease made the slide twice as slippery and so twice as fast. Many a mother, including my own, despaired at the endless shiny grease-stained shorts and skirts they had to continually contend with.

---

---