When I was little, at the top of the road was an old debris. It covered a very large area and wasn't boarded up so all the kids in the area used to go up there and play amongst the rubble. What I didn't know then, was that this was an old bomb site left over from world war 2. Quite a few houses must have been bombed because the area is where Maryland school is now.
Groups of kids used to go up there and build dens or just run around throwing things and generally finding things to play and play with in amongst the old bricks, my sister, who played there a few years before me, said she used to find pots and pans and household things to play with, luckily she never found any bodies, although I suppose people may well have lost their lives there.
My Mum and Dad banned me from playing there as they considered it dangerous, but one afternoon I went up and while I was there fell over and gashed my knee very badly on an upturned brick. It poured with blood and to this day I have a scar on my knee, but what to do? I couldn't go back to tell my Mum she would have smacked me for playing there, so I ended up going to auntie Sue's house. Her Mum bandaged it up for me and took me home telling my Mum I had fallen and landed on a brick in the street.
So that was our main playground, we had parks we could go to, West Ham and the Recreation ground (now Stratford Park) but playing on the old world war 2 bombs sites was closer to home and more entertaining
