Don't kids build dens anymore?

We used to build them all the time, each one ever so slightly better than the last, my particular favourite was up a tree - it was basically a wardrobe on a pallet, god knows how we got it up the tree and how we didn't kill ourselves by falling from it. Pretty stable but our structural knowledge wasn't the best, and at a guess I'd say it was at an equivalent height to three stories so we'd have been in trouble if a branch had given way. Unfortunately we turned up one day and it had gone...probably for the best!

 

Tree houses definitely part of my childhood. Used to always be climbing trees. Once got stuck so Mario went and got my mum to help. She stood underneath and promised me she would catch me and it would be ok. I let go, mum forgot about the catching, and I got roasted for climbing.

We also used to have an old air raid shelter we converted to a den. Big old cable reel as a meeting table.

 

Them air-raid shelters were the best dens ever. That tree house down at the bottom end of the beck near the railway line was damned good too.

 

Used to enjoy exploring the old railway line through Wombwell woods when we were kids, loads of old structures from the railway that you could make into a den, particularly the old signal boxes....it's a shame everything has since been obliterated and it's barely possible to tell a railway even went through there. Bit weird seeing the old platforms peeking out of the undergrowth at Dovecliffe. Anyone know when the trains stopped on this line? I can never remember seeing a train running on it but I'm pretty sure I can remember the tracks still in place as me and my granddad used to walk the dog up there - although knowing him it was probably the still active railway we were crossing!

 

I definitely used to. In fact we used to have rival dens, they'd occasionally invade ours when we weren't there and steel our sticks so we'd get our own back and trash theirs and vice versa.

Those were the days.

 

We had a hospital in ours n lasses acted as nurses , r wa allus badly

 

We had a prison. We would kidnap people from other dens and make them help us clean it out. Anyone that refused were put in a patch of nettles that we called prison. All seems a bit brutal now.

 

I bet kids never get nettled these days either, probably as they never go out...although I don't seem to see that many nettles about now? Always remember rushing for a dot leaf after getting nettled - did they actually do owt or was it just something our parents told us to do to keep our mind off the sting?

 

Weren't a fan of dot leaves I used spit. Grim.

 

There was the old air raid gun bunker in wombwell woods as well, creepy as hell but a brilliant den.

 

I used to spit on the dot leaf!? and then rub it on! Was I brought up on a myth? :s

 

It should be illegal to go through childhood without being nettled and without having built and played in a den.

 

Dock leaf ?

 

In this health & safety mad world... You must be kidding

The cotton wool kids of today can't even play out of sight of mum and dad until there teens...

I remember falling out of trees, learning by mistakes, wandering into forest and playing football down the park with other kids from very young age... And as long as you were home for tea all was good. If you were late you'd get a telling off or a smack. And there were no mobiles in the 80s

Freedom...

 

Beat me to it.

 

We once borrowed some wood from a bonfire we'd been building to build a den over a hole in the floor that we found. It was pretty big too. Flooded when it rained sadly.

Bonfires was another thing we used to do regularly. We had a monster one year because the church behind my mates house was having a new roof and the workmen kindly donated the old wood from the roof to our bonfire. Another year my mates dad had a load of wood in his garden, so we dragged it half way across Cudworth to put it on our bonfire. He went ballistic when hr found out, he'd bought it to build a new fence.

 

Bloody hell I'm not sure now. Wa probably a big hoax to watch all young uns covering themselves in spit!!