The Adventure Play Fair at Thursford

Our brief with the Adventure Play Fair at Thursford was to create a magical world to excite and entice the imagination, encapsulate a sense of wonder and encourage visitors to step back in time. We were aiming to allow children and families to play and explore together.

We wanted to create something that enabled the visitor to discover the magic of the fairground like never before. Introducing classic rides and attractions, reimagined and constructed from timber, with vintage fairground colours and detailing, rides connected with walkways, bridges and tunnels, across multiple levels, so there was a challenge, a sense of discovery and remembered childhoods for all ages.

The concepts came thick and fast. A giant Ferris Wheel with internal clamber routes, two different level slide decks to offer a range of challenges, giant drop slides that are accessed from within the Ferris Wheel cabins.

A Helter Skelter, styled around a tower with spiralling slides from the top. Internal clamber routes which give you access to a slide launch deck that wraps around the outside of the structure, just as the original does - but fully enclosed for extra speed and safety. There are also look out windows that give views to a wider park and an elevated walkway entrance, with ramp access at multiple levels to ensure exceptional accessibility.

And all of it was designed to work in harmony with the Thursford Christmas Spectacular - their main attraction, which adopts the aesthetic of a Victorian Christmas village, reminiscent of something straight out of a Dickens novel.

And this is what we created

The design process

You can see from the very early sketches how it started to come to life with the Vintage Fairground theme. Even on this first sketch, the giant Ferris Wheel was there with a slide off to the side. The Galloping Horses made an early appearance too, with the Helter Skelter in the background and the Tin Can Alley off to the left-hand side. All of these made the final cut.

As the design progressed, and elements and locations began to firm up, we then completed a full layout of the site to understand scale and to plan how the movement of people would work to avoid hot spots and bottlenecks.

It was at this stage that the exceptional Play Fountain Splash Pad appeared too. It's a first in a UK park and has 1,000 water jets that are completely controllable, to create patterns that follow the music and chase around the whole area in random or pre-planned programmes. Even the control box alongside has been themed to look like a Victorian steam organ.

We also added a Kart track, created to replicate the fun of the ever-popular dodgems, that weaves in and around the play structures and allows guests to race around the curvy track against and alongside their friends.

In order to bring it all together, we also created a plan for the surfacing. It's an easy detail to overlook, but for us, adds a real layer of coherence and interest as well as ensuring safety compliance throughout.

We specified a variety of surfacing colours and textures to help to break up the expanse of hard and soft surfacing across the site. The plan below shows how the themed patterns in the play safety surfacing helps to further enhance the play experience and site aesthetic.

The CGI's then made the ideas become a near reality. You could begin to visualise how the play would come to life with the colours and the sounds of a Victorian steam-powered fun fair and reminiscent of Nottingham's famous Goose Fair.

Background

Situated in the small village of Thursford in North Norfolk, this much loved attraction is home to the world famous Christmas spectacular, Santa’s magical journey and the all year round steam engine and organ museum, hosting the largest collection in the world! With the large majority of visitors coming to Thursford for it’s renowned Christmas shows, our work was to help Thursford become as popular year-round as it is through the festive season.

The Thursford Christmas Spectacular was founded in the late 1970s by John Cushing, the son of steam engine pioneer George Cushing who had been instrumental in putting Thursford on the map. In the late 1970s, 600 attendees gathered for a carol concert and numbers for what is now known as the Christmas Spectacular has increased ever since. Both John and George had been enchanted by the idea of a fair being held in the village, especially George who had grown up when Thursford was still a remote place and the only music to be heard came from the local church. For most villagers the only method of travel was by walking, or in rare cases cycling, and the bustling city of Norwich was generally inaccessible at the time

You can see more and book tickets here.