West Lodge Rural Centre is situated in a secluded area of Desborough within easy reach of Peterborough, Northampton, and Leicester. The Dee family has been farming at West Lodge for three generations, opening the Rural Centre in 1995. West Lodge is a working farm with livestock, woods, fields, streams, and machinery. The family has a mission to share their enthusiasm for the countryside, providing hands-on experiences for adults and children with animal handling experiences, pony rides, piglet racing, and much more!
On a mission to regenerate their indoor play barn, the Rural Centre asked Greenspan Projects Ltd to help bring a bit of traditional British woodland indoors. Our dedicated design team created an immersive, fully themed playscape that features an outstanding centrepiece – a giant hollow oak tree with an enchanting tree house looming from the upper branches. The treetop hideout not only provides a brilliant vantage point and lookout but also a giant spiral-slide down to the forest floor.
The centrepiece is surrounded by three woodland zones and an orchard zone, allowing children to seamlessly flow around the playscape using net bridges, platforms, slides, stepping posts, a climbing wall, and ledges. Every minute detail has been thought through by our experienced design team to provide a truly authentic play experience, with inspiration taken from local farming connections, including young tree saplings, fruit harvesting, and natural, local stone quarrying.
The design incorporates designated seating areas, one of which sits on a mezzanine floor, providing fantastic views of the impressive floor to ceiling playscape. Our design and build teams have worked together to ensure that this truly impressive playscape design offers an authentic British woodland experience. With the design spanning the entire height of the barn, it was vital to ensure that the design worked across all elevations, our dedicated 3D team was key to ensuring this was achieved by producing 3D visuals of the entire barn area.
Greenspan’s brilliant build team worked on every detail, from the artificial quarry wall, oak leaves, gnarled oak branches, and bark textures, to provide visitors with an authentic, indoor piece of British woodland.
The latest figures show that revenue is up 61% since the opening of the indoor play barn
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