How to set up a temporary network

First let me explain scenario.
Local sports club trains in a large school hall. At moment everything is paper-based (e.g. registers, awards checking). Club has been donated a core-i5 laptop (Windows 10) and three iPads.

A member has developed a web-based (HTML/PHP/JQuery) administration system on the laptop (using MySQL as the backend,, and has installed WAMP server for testing.

The laptop is taken to the school every session, and is used for various purposes.

Basically my question is how would I go about setting up this simple network - would any extra items be required (e.g. would I need a router?)

Thanks

Is the aim to allow the iPads to ONLY access the laptop based website?

Then you might be able to set up an ad-hoc wireless network, but probably simpler to have a wireless router nothing too special and connect devices to the Wi-Fi of that, rather than rely on the PC to also run the Wi-Fi network.