Radlands, Northampton

Radlands began with a family who followed their sons into skating. Chris and Jennifer Ince ran a café at Milton Keynes bus station, where they also sold skate gear to the locals skating its granite ledges. After a successful contest there in 1992, they put the money from the snack bar towards a bigger idea: a proper indoor park.

They found a warehouse of about 10,000 square feet in Northampton, brought over a ramp builder from America, and opened in 1992. It is often billed as Britain's first indoor skatepark, and by the time it closed it was one of the largest in the country. Footage from that first year shows the new vert ramp in use, with Rune Glifberg and Pete Dossett riding it, while the street course was still being built.

For skaters all over England it was the place to go when it rained, which was often. It was cheap, you could get there on a Day Rover bus ticket, and crews made weekly trips. Tom Penny's local shop crew drove an hour each Wednesday and skated until closing. Early tapes also catch Geoff Rowley and Alex Moul, and Carl Shipman, Danny Wainwright, Rodney Clarke and Ali Cairns all came through in the 1990s.

Radlands hosted the UK championships, which drew riders from abroad. Penny finished third there in 1993, sixth in 1994 and won in 1995, the year he really took off. His first international video part, in 411VM Issue 2 in 1993, was filmed at the park.

Money was always tight. Radlands closed for good on 10 October 2004 after running at a loss, despite a local effort to keep it open. By then it had seen something like a quarter of a million visits.

Northampton kept the name. From 2009 the borough council worked with the Northampton Skate Park Action Group on a replacement, £250,000 was pledged in 2011, and Radlands Plaza, an outdoor park built by Wheelscape, opened at Midsummer Meadow on Bedford Road on 21 July 2012. In 2017 Damian Ince brought the old locals together at the Pioneer Club in St Albans to mark 25 years since the doors first opened.