The 3 Stones Castle: when the party crumbles

The most recent castle playground (circa 2024) in Bingfield Park is more than just a space for children; it is a living, breathing echo chamber of the past and present. Long before the metallic towers and slides settled there, this land bore witness to the passage of the dead, as funeral trains rattled through Rufford Street. It later became a place of struggle, where Beaconsfield council estate earned the name “The Crumbles,” a label that would live on in the first castle-like playground that was later built in its place.

As we recorded sounds using a contact microphone, we interacted with the space as we were meant to - swinging, sliding, running - letting the structure itself tell its story through the creaks of metal, the thuds of footsteps, or the scrape of gravel. We also listened to what lingers after dark. A discarded Red Bull can, perhaps left by those who claim the park when the children have gone home, became our instrument as we dragged it along the railings. In Kings Cross, where much of the land around our college is dealt with as privately owned public space, places like these are playgrounds of freedom, where history, play, and the presence of those before us collide. Here, the sound of today intertwines with the past, shaping a space that never truly stops speaking. And so, in the spirit of those who came before us - those who built, played, and reclaimed this land - we too left our mark, giving the structure a name of our own: the Three Stones Castle, a quiet assertion that this space belongs to all who move through it.