A playground with a difference

A playground with a difference – New Pirate Ship Playground  in the Quality Hotel in Clonakilty a huge success

A  huge wooden pirate ship is the amazing centre-piece for  a unique new playground recently opened at the Quality Hotel in Clonakilty. This children’s wonderland opened in Feb 2015 adding to the fantastic range of facilities currently on offer for children at the Hotel.

Kids love to play, explore and let their creativity soar in this magical space. The Pirate Boat enables children to play both inside and outside and consists of various fun aspects including swings, slides, climbing nets, climbing walls and tunnels. The boat has two levels, a ground floor which provides good shelter for unpredictable weather and the upper level providing a great space for the children to act out real life pirate games.

David Henry, General Manager at the Quality Hotel in Clonakilty initiated this exciting project. “We wanted to provide something different to a conventional playground for the children, we have a large number of family memberships at the leisure centre and we are catering for a lot of  children. We came up with the idea of the ship and it has been a huge success. There are always children playing on it. The kids love the novelty factor of the boat. Visitors to the hotel regularly comment about the ship on Facebook and Trip Adviser, it has been a huge hit.” says David.

The Pirate Ship playground was created by Aidan Hennessy of Hennessy Timber Group.

” Having kids myself, I wanted to design a playground which is visually appealing but also captures children’s imaginations. I wanted to design something which created a “wow” factor and was different to a standard playground . ” says Aidan.

“A budget was allocated, we presented several design options before deciding on the end product. The site size was a little restrictive so we worked within this and came up with a design which worked best within the space.”

Aidan incorporated creative thinking and innovative design for this project . The entire boat structure was manufactured offsite and craned into position onsite at the Quality Hotel. With the entire construction process taking place in Hennessy Timber Group’s own factory, this not only enabled efficiency, but also enabled the project to be completed at an ease of the hotel.

“I carefully selected the correct type of product to use for the boat, in this case Latvian Redwood timber which is smooth in finish, ideal for playgrounds, and proven to last for years. The timber was carefully curved and shaped by skilled carpenters led by Peter Johnson in the factory  resulting in a magnificent eye catching ship.” says Aidan.

” We provided a turnkey solution to the hotel , carrying out the groundwork and auxiliary work at the site in preparation for  the arrival of the ship. We were delighted with the end result and we are grateful to the Quality Hotel for the opportunity to work on such an exciting project”

” 2014 was an exciting year at Hennessy Timber Group,  we built our first Pirate Ship playground and we also built our first bespoke timber maze, which is now a popular attraction at the Smugglers Cove Pirate golf course in Rosscarbery. Another interesting and successful project in 2014 was the design of a bespoke timber structure to house the pre-school for the Gaelscoil in Clonakilty.” says Aidan.

The Park Cinema Ltd are in the process of designing and building a High Rope Trek Course, due to open in 2016, adding to the suite of Entertainment Facilities available at the Quality Hotel Resort.

Hennessy Timber Group also manufacture garden sheds, decking, fencing, bespoke timber cabins, play systems, swing sets, climbing frames, garden storage, playhouses, dog kennels and more. For more information on the full range of Timber products available at Hennessy Timber Group, please contact  086 2688392.

Published Southern Star Newspaper Oct 2015