Paul Farley and Michael Simmons Roberts failed to find a den on their Edgelands pilgrimage though the chapter in their book on dens has merit. The den should be invisible to adult eyes anyway. I was fortunate to find this fine example. I tried to advance the idea that den building was a lost art to a local from the area I am currently in and was informed that this was far from true. Sadly, as so often, when talking to those who have no knowledge of areas where city drifts in to countryside, I failed to translate what I meant. Not the sanitised father assisted structures of Ruperts and Ashleys. No, the den by definition is a high risk affair of often stolen or factory discard materials.
To quote from Edgelands, 'The den is a secret place, built outside the confines of the adult world. It is a place of retreat, but also a place of togetherness, a social place, that reinforces alegiances and bonds between small groups or gangs. Children have built them instinctively, but could it be that the english post war edgelands saw a golden age of den building? Children were widely encouraged to get out from under parents feet and play outdoors without too great a perceived fear of danger from predatory adults, and this coincided with shifts in social housing policy, the clearance of inner city dwellings and the construction of huge new housing estate developements, often on the urban periphery. All of a sudden it wasn't just Peter and Jane from the Ladybird Key Works Reading scheme who could play with tents in a greenscape of seemingly infinite resource; used to city housing with small backyards and streets to play in, children found themselves on the dege of what seemed a prairie vast wilderness, often littered with the detritus left behind after their new houses had been built.'
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