The origins of adventure playgrounds are normally attributed to the work of a Danish landscape architect at the end of the 1940s. Children were playing on a building site when the contractors were not there. He noticed that the children were building dens and creatively playing with building materials so he set aside some space well supplied with sand, water, timber, paint and some basic tools. The children clearly shared the architect's interest in construction, experimentation, his tactile awareness and imagination.

Post war Britain had plenty of bombsites and slum clearance that made for plenty of space for adventure playgrounds and they were established in hundreds of locations. Children, helped by play workers, created their own play environments including ‘play structures'.

One result of those early adventure playgrounds is the way the ideas have affected how play equipment in parks and housing estates is now designed. Many of the children's and play workers' ideas have filtered through to the design of fixed, manufactured playgrounds, creating more child friendly, colourful, stimulating equipment, an increased use of timber and more opportunity to climb and invent new ways to play.