wood rots .it does rain a lot in England .more than Australia and USA .
That is true, I used to live in Leeds and ran around hyde park there, they had some basic parallel bars, hanging bars and pull up bars, again, more rustic looking that these.
Similarly, I worked in Basingstoke and Eastrop park there has the rustic style stuff.
They all tended to have the equipment on running routes, i.e. the idea is to run 400 metres, do an excercise and then run on to the next one (same sset up in Rushcutters bay, Sydney, Central Park NY). When I used to run along the canal to Memorial park, I'd use a park bench to do an excercise, run to the next, run to the kid's play area and do monkey arms etc - my opinion is, yes, they would be great but I'd prefer something very basic and space them apart.
I have seen this equipment in Lisbon and it was grouped together like a gym. It looked like it was seldom used.