Tag: Portsmouth

(Un)safe heritage?

In this post, the third in our series of blogs looking at sites of historical interest in Portsmouth, Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History at Portsmouth, explores what might be learnt from an apparently unexceptional piece of the city’s built environment. Mike’s research and teaching focus on the everyday, including ideas about mobility and accidents in modern Britain.

Not far from my office, there’s yet another mundane object that for most of the time, most people don’t notice – for 140 years it was part of the background to life around Burnaby Road. For a week or so earlier this year, however, it became very noticeable – particularly its absence, which left a hole in the eyeline. And then, once replaced and the shock of the new subsided, it has once again become a part of the background.

This post is about a bridge. To be precise, the railway bridge over Burnaby Road, on the final trundle from Portsmouth & Southsea station to the Harbour station. Erected by the London & South Western Railway in 1876, the bridge was certainly functional – yet also not without a faded decorative element, at least by the time of its removal. I like these everyday things; if we stop and notice them, they tell us all sorts about the societies that produced them and the society of the present moment.

The bridge was life-expired. It looked a little the worse for wear if one remembered to look up whilst walking underneath (not advised when it was raining!). It was also in need of strengthening, as age and changing technology had taken their toll on the original design – not unreasonable given it was carrying well over 100,000 trains a year. It might have been a relatively straightforward decision to remove the bridge and replace it with a plain girder bridge. But this isn’t quite the way it worked out.

The process of removing the bridge and installing the new one required extensive planning, preparation and a road closure for a week. The new bridge was assembled nearby and moved into place – no mean feat given the physical constraints around the site and the need to move the 88-tonne structure around 200 metres. Over the course of a week in February the old bridge came down and the new one went in.

A decision was taken – and I don’t know where or by whom – that the replacement bridge show mirror the aesthetic of the original. So, whilst never particularly ornate, the look of the bridge – including its new paintwork – at least referred back to its predecessor. This bridge wasn’t a heritage asset in the way that say the nearby Mary Rose or HMS Victory might be. But it was a part of the working heritage of the area. That was reflected in the colour scheme used on the new bridge, which referred to Portsmouth’s city colours. This was a relatively subtle marker of civic belonging, a means of siting the bridge in its locale.

So clearly the bridge might not be ‘just’ a bridge: it can be used in particular ways. This raises questions pertinent to transport museums and the preservation movement more widely: how do you retain the essence of things that are functional? Did the original bridge have some sort of intrinsic worth or value ‘just’ because of its age? Remove it from its context and purpose and does the bridge retain that value? Just like trains that are preserved in museums, as static exhibits: they were designed to move, so when still have they lost their raison d’etre? Or has the value and meaning changed? What values do we, as a society, place upon these mundane artefacts – particularly infrastructure, like the bridge – without which our world would be very different, but for most of the time we don’t notice because they function smoothly?

There’s another element to the story, which ties in with my research: safety. A quick glance at the ‘before’ and ‘after’ images flags up some prominent differences between the old and new bridges. There’s the yellow and black hazard warning bar and the height limit notice, obscuring some of the paintwork replicating the original but designed to deter bridge strikes (a major problem on the rail network). Of greater interest to me, for my work on the history of workplace safety & accidents (particularly in the rail industry), there was additional consideration: safe access across the bridge for railway workers.

The old bridge was narrow, without adequate provision for workers to cross at track level. This meant they had to watch carefully and squeeze past when there were no trains coming: hardly safe in anyone’s imagination. Indeed, some of the cases of railway worker accidents coming out of the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project I co-lead with the National Railway Museum are of exactly this scenario: narrow bridges and workers being struck by passing trains, sometimes with fatal results. This was either the original engineers being blind to the workers, who were not high up in their considerations especially when weighed against extra cost, or a deliberate decision to put worker lives at risk. This might (hopefully!) seem shocking by today’s standards but it was not surprising for the 19^th century.

In a sign of how times have changed, proper access routes were built into the new bridge, seen in the walkway (including safety rail) on either side of the bridge, away from the moving trains. It changes the look of the bridge, certainly, but this again relates to the discussions about how far built heritage can or should be adapted for modern standards. Given this was a new installation the debate was, hopefully, minimal; it would have been a much easier proposition than trying to adapt an original structure. Thankfully we have a higher regard for safety now than 140 years ago – which isn’t to suggest that things are perfect today, but to acknowledge that priorities and who is valued have shifted.

So, via a number of routes, an initially unpromising structure can be interrogated to reveal interesting glimpse of the values of the societies which both produced the original and the replacement bridges. If we look closely at such objects we can see where particular concepts and values are built into the fabric of any mundane item.

August 31, 2018
Going to the cinema? The changing uses of Portsmouth’s cinema buildings

In this blog, the second in a series of posts looking at sites of historical interest in Portsmouth, Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, discusses the changing uses of the city’s cinema buildings. Rob specialises in researching society’s leisure activities and teaches a number of units on film and the cinema, including, as part of the Problems and Perspectives unit, ‘History at the Movies’ in the first year, ‘The Way to the Stars: Film and cinema-going in Britain, c. 1900-c. 2000’ option in the second year, and a Special Subject on ‘Cinema-going in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945’ in the third year.

Going to the cinema was an important leisure pastime in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. Millions of the country’s citizens flocked to the cinema on a weekly basis, leading one prominent historian to refer to the activity as the ‘social habit of the age’. [1]

In order to respond to the growing number of people going to the cinema, thousands of new venues were built across the country. On top of this, many existing buildings were converted into cinema halls. Here in Portsmouth, for example, a tobacco factory located in Queens Street, Portsea was modified, opening as the Queens Cinema in 1914 with enough space to accommodate over 500 patrons. [2] What was once a site of labour, became a site for relaxation.

Queens Cinema, Portsea

By the start of the Second World War there were 29 cinemas located across the town. Many of these were plush ‘picture palaces’, constructed as part of the boom period of cinema building in the 1920s and 30s, such as the Odeon and Regent (later Gaumont) cinemas in London Road, North End, the Plaza (later Gaumont) at Bradford Junction, Fratton, the Tivoli, in Copnor Road, Copnor, and the Palace in Commercial Street (now Guildhall Walk).

Many of these buildings have long been lost. Not, as may be assumed, to enemy bombing during the war (only one cinema – the Princes Theatre in Lake Road – was completely demolished in the Blitz), but to the bulldozer after the Council began its post-war reconstruction programme. [3]

Bomb damage to the Princes Theatre, Lake Road

A good number of buildings survived the bulldozers, though. The Odeon in North End still stands, as does the Plaza/Gaumont in Fratton, and the Palace in Guildhall Walk. They are no longer cinemas, however, but serve other purposes. The Odeon is now a Sainsbury’s Local store, the Plaza/Gaumont was turned into a Bingo hall in the 1990s, and then became a mosque, while the Palace is now a nightclub – the Astoria – and a popular haunt for our students!

Odeon cinema, North End

The former Odeon cinema, now a Sainsbury’s Local supermarket

Plaza/Gaumont cinema, Bradford Junction

The former Plaza/Gaumont cinema, now Portsmouth Tami Mosque

The Palace cinema, Commercial Street (now Guildhall Walk)

The former Palace cinema, now the Astoria nightclub

The changing uses of buildings is a fascinating history to uncover. As society’s leisure activities alter as the years go by, certain pastimes fall out of favour while others replace them, so the purposes of the buildings in which these activities took place changes too.

Some buildings become redundant and are lost to the cityscape forever. But many remain; they just serve a different purpose. So the next time you are in the Astoria strutting your stuff, think about the generations of people before you who have whiled away their leisure hours in that space in the past. Think, too, about what may become of that venue in the future. Will other generations use the space for different purposes?

Notes

[1] Cited in Jeffrey Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in Britain 1930-1939, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 11.

[2] Robert James, ‘Cinema-going in a Port Town, 1914-1951: Film Booking patterns at the Queens Cinema, Portsmouth’, Urban History, 40.2, 2013, pp. 315-335, p. 317.

[3] http://michaelcooper.org.uk/C/othervenues.htm

August 24, 2018
Forlorn remnant of a runaway King

In this blog, the first in a series of posts by the History team looking at sites of historical interest in Portsmouth, David Andress, Professor in Modern History at Portsmouth, reveals the fascinating history of King James’s Gate, an almost-unique monument to a monarch who fled the country he ruled. Dave specialises in the history of the French Revolution, and of the social and cultural history of conflicts in Europe and the Atlantic world more generally in the period between the 1760s and 1840s. He teaches across the undergraduate degree, and currently delivers core teaching on methodologies, as well as contributing his specialist knowledge of eighteenth-century and revolutionary France to first- and third-year modules.

Around a hundred metres from the home of University of Portsmouth’s History team, there stands an intriguing marker of historical change.

King James’s Gate

King James’s Gate is now little more than an ornament on the boundary of the United Services Sports Ground, but when it was erected in 1687, it was one of the principal entrances to Portsmouth’s state-of-the-art fortifications, and a symbol of resurgent absolutist monarchy.

The gate crowned by weeds

King James II had come to the throne in 1685, succeeding his brother Charles II, and seeing off a rebellion led by his illegitimate nephew the Duke of Monmouth. The fate of the rebels gave to English history the legend of the ‘Bloody Assizes‘ and the merciless ‘hanging judge’ Jeffreys, who was made Lord Chancellor after presiding over more than 300 executions and 800 deportations. Four years later, Jeffreys would die in the Tower of London, after King James had fled the country in the face of invading Dutch forces, invited by the Protestant political elite in what became known as the ‘Glorious Revolution’.

James’s short and catastrophic reign, marked by fear of the imposition of Catholicism, left Portsmouth’s gate as an almost-unique relic of his rule. Inscribed in Latin ‘Jacobus Secundus Rex A Reg III A Domi 1687’ – King James II in the third year of his reign, the year of our lord 1687 – it formed part of the modernisation of Portsmouth’s defences as England’s foremost naval port, and literal gateway to a global empire.

As Duke of York under his brother’s reign, James II had been a noted naval commander, serving as titular head of the navy as Lord High Admiral (and Governor of Portsmouth), and directing naval strategy through two Anglo-Dutch wars in the 1660s and 1670s. He was also a leading figure in the Royal African Company, a state-backed slave-trading enterprise.

Naval campaigning in these wars united control over such activities with expansion of territory in the Americas, where the colony of New York was named in James’s honour after being captured, as New Netherland, from the Dutch. Under Charles II and James II, English settlements in the region were united into Viceroyalties under authoritarian governors, with the clear aim of expanding them as tightly-controlled subsidiaries of royal rule. The Glorious Revolution saw local settlers regain autonomy that they would continue to fight for down to the American Revolution – while also, of course, continuing to expand their slaveholding practices.

The gate that now stands rather forlornly on Burnaby Road is thus an emblem of a different absolutist vision of British Empire, that would nonetheless have been held together by the strength of the Royal Navy just as the post-1689 one was. Its architecture became something of an embarrassment in the late nineteenth century, and it was dismantled in the 1860s and kept in storage for several decades before being re-erected on its current site.

English Heritage information panel

For more information on the gate’s history follow this link

July 26, 2018
A Heritage Lottery Fund Grant for the University of Portsmouth for an Oral History Project on Women’s Activism Since 1960

Dr Sue Bruley, Reader in Modern History at Portsmouth, has won a large grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to research women’s activism in Portsmouth since 1960. The project will investigate the many struggles women faced living and working in the naval city. Sue’s research focuses on gender and women’s history in the 20th century, and she teaches a special subject on ‘Gender, Sexuality and War 1922-80’ and an option ‘The First World War, A Social and Gender History’.

The University of Portsmouth has been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £73,300 to research women’s activism in Portsmouth. This project will led by Sue Bruley, Reader in Modern History, and Laurel Forster, Senior Lecturer in Media. Acting with partners Portsmouth Library Service and the University of the Third Age (U3A), the University’s project – ‘The Hidden Heritage of a Naval Town: Women’s Community Activism in Portsmouth since 1960’ – will undertake 50 oral history interviews from local women active in promoting positive change for women and the community if Portsmouth.

The topics to be investigated will include struggles at work such as equal pay, maternity pay and sexual harassment, promoting non-sexist learning materials in schools, the women’s aid movement, the peace movement, anti-racist activism and the campaign for improved housing. The project is particularly concerned with issues connected with women in the naval community. The project will document the activism of women from a diverse range of backgrounds, ensuring issues of class, race and sexuality are addressed.

The interviews will be conducted by community volunteers who will be trained in oral history techniques. Other volunteers will be working on the website for the project, which will include short ‘video stories’ from some of the women’s testimony. There will also be a small mobile exhibition touring schools and libraries, a booklet and two public lectures. The Portsdown branch of the U3A will provide some of the volunteers. The rest will be recruited via the project website and an official launch. We hope very much that some of our former History students will want to take part in this exciting project.

The project does not officially go ‘live’ until September 1^st, but before then much preparatory work needs to be done; a website, archive research, equipment to be bought, etc.. There will be two part-time, one year staff appointments: a project co-ordinator (0.6) and an assistant (0.5) who will act as a paid intern for the project. The adverts for these posts are live on the University website.

If you would like more details of volunteer placements, staff posts, or you know someone who we could interview for the project, please get in touch with sue.bruley@port.ac.uk. I am happy to talk about the project with anyone who is interested. Please pass this message on to anyone you think might want to know about this project. The details for the two posts are listed below (with the link to the adverts).

Go to https://port.engageats.co.uk/ and look for the following:

ZZ004616 Project Co-ordinator (0.6 Fractional, 12 months from 1.9.18)

ZZ004617 Project Administrator (0.5 Fractional, 12 months from 1.9.18)

June 8, 2018
‘A vital part of any university career’: A student’s experience of taking a placement unit

Ian Atkins, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on his experience of doing a work placement at the National Museum of the Royal Navy Library for the Public History Placement Unit. The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Melanie Bassett, Research Assistant for Port Towns and Urban Cultures and Part Time Lecturer in History.

The Public History Placement unit, a vital part of any university career, is an option that is available to Second Year Students in the School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies. Encompassing a wide and varied variability of placements the option aims to give an insight into the types of careers that are available to the deserving History graduate. Skills learnt in this unit allow for opportunity into a wide area of Public History, which as described by Faye Sayer ‘is the work by historians to associate the past with the present and communicate such to the public’, in a way that is understood and managed by those who do not possess a professional qualification. [1] This is not to diminish the importance of the past, nor is it too dumb down the past, it is a way of integrating everyone in their collective history. The use of public history allows for further understanding of collective memory, a function that academics are at lengths to stress binds us all, as we have lived through the experiences and are able to learn from them. [2]

I undertook a placement that was based at the National Museum of the Royal Navy Library. A collections library based at the Historic Dockyard, Portsmouth. The library holds extensive collections showcasing treasures of over 350 years of seafaring history, focusing on exclusive collections of Horatio, Lord Nelson, service records, personal accounts and many other collections that have a relation to the sea and the way the British Navy dominated the oceans. [3] A museum of this type has a dedicated team of professional historians and volunteers, who ‘make a positive and lasting impact contributing to the industry [and] their support is vital to releasing the creative energies of the hard-pressed professional’. [4] The volunteers and staff are, as suggested, a vital part of allowing the public to fully engage with the museum and its artefacts.

When envisioning working in a place such as the NMRN, or indeed any institution, local or national, there has to be consideration of the way that that institution understands its sense of place. There has to be understanding that it is relevant, how that even after 600 years museums are still one of the most active tourist attractions available to the public. [5] With such a varied history themselves, the museum ultimately becomes part of the artefacts that they display. There has been, as of 1992, rapid growth and ‘change within the museum industry, throwing the previous assumptions of museums into disarray’. [6] This is where a unit dedicated to Public History is essential. It is a way of understanding those changes and the necessity to, as anniversaries come and go, understand the collective past. History is something that connects us all, a state we cannot escape from, if we don’t learn about it we will never learn from it. [7] It is for this reason why a placement unit is important, and why more students should take advantage of it. The work may be time consuming, and sometimes not what is always expected, but nonetheless it is stimulating and it is always interesting to be able to handle and read documents and artefacts, many over 200 years old.

The Placement allowed for skills that will be beneficial to an industry that is so fast paced that there is very little time to give full and professional training; an industry very much built on ‘on the job training’, and voluntary work is a vital component to the smooth running of such. [8] Collections management is a role that all those looking for a career in Public History should be prepared to do; it is the role most accessible in this industry. It also allows for interrelation with historical documents and artefacts that can only ever normally be viewed by appointment or behind glass. Public history is very dominated by government intervention. Progressive governments have ideas on how and what should be taught as part of the nation’s history. The addition or omission of certain facts, objects or other form in museums is testament to this. A public history placement allows for both hands-on experience in a museum or other industry, but in-class experience is also invaluable to the understanding of what is available within this field.

The unit is one that comes highly recommended, if either you have experience in working in the industry or work experience in general. This unit will give you strong and lasting insights into the roles that are available to you as a graduate. History is a complex and fulfilling degree to hold, it is a course that shows you have the skills to work independently, to spec, and within time limits. The Public History industry is made up of multi-facet levels within an organisation, to be counted and noticed in this industry you must demonstrate experience, the placement will give you the skills which can be used to further this experience. It is also an industry that can, at times, be quite demanding. There are a lot of things to do within the organisation and not nearly enough time to do them. The placement will allow you to be able to see this first hand. University is a bubble, one where you are naturally helped along at every stage, the work place is far more different and to gain this experience whilst still having that safety net of university is invaluable. The placement may also allow for continued involvement with your chosen industry which, as already explained, will not only lead to a long lasting relationship for yourself, but for the university as a whole. It is therefore noted this unit and its subsequent placement are both rewarding and thought provoking.

Notes

[1] Faye Sayer, Public History: A Practical Guide. (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 22.

[2] John Tosh, The Pursuit of History 6th ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 259.

[3] National Museum of the Royal Navy. “Home Page.” http://www.nmrn-portsmouth.org.uk/, last accessed 16 May 2018.

[4] Sinclair Goddard, and Stephanie McIvor, Museum Volunteers: Good Practice in the Management of Volunteers. (London: Routledge, 2005), 1.

[5] Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge. (London: Routledge, 1992), i.

[6] Hooper-Greenhill, Museums, 1.

[7] Big Think. “”Those Who Do Not Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It.” Really?” http://bigthink.com/the-proverbial-skeptic/those-who-do-not-learn-history-doomed-to-repeat-it-really, last accessed 16 May 2018.

[8] The Historical Association. “Careers in History.” http://www.history.org.uk/student/resource/2914/careers-in-history, last accessed 2 January 2018.

May 30, 2018
‘Make your public curious’: The highs and lows of being a cinema manager

In this blog Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, discusses the challenges of being a cinema manager in Britain in the first half of the 20^th century. Rob specialises in researching society’s leisure activities and teaches a number of units on film and the cinema, including, as part of the Problems and Perspectives unit, ‘History at the Movies’ in the first year, ‘The Way to the Stars: Film and cinema-going in Britain, c. 1900-c. 2000’ option in the second year, and a Special Subject on ‘Cinema-going in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945’ in the third year.

Going to the cinema is the result of a series of choices. A number of ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors operate in those decisions. Simply put, ‘push’ factors are things like bad weather, where patrons would go to the cinema in order to keep cosy and warm; ‘pull’ factors are those that draw cinema-goers in, such as the film being shown. In the first half of the twentieth century, when cinema-going was, to use the often quoted phrase by A.J.P. Taylor, the ‘social habit of the age’, cinema-goers were offered a wide variety of films to watch and a large number of cinemas in which to watch them. [1] Here in Portsmouth, for example, there were 29 cinemas located across the town at the start of the Second World War. [2] On top of this, consumers had a host of other leisure activities – pub-going, dancing, reading – competing for their free time, so going to the cinema was a conscious decision made after taking a series of choices. Cinema managers knew that if they were to run a successful and profitable business, they had to respond to the needs of the public. As a result, they paid close attention to their patrons’ film preferences, and many managers ran extravagant publicity campaigns in order to attract customers into their cinema halls.

Odeon Cinema, North End, Portsmouth

Across the country cinema mangers went to significant lengths to promote the films their cinemas were due to screen, and their campaigns were often mentioned in the film trade papers. One of the most important cinema managers’ journals of the period, Kinematograph Weekly, ran regular features that detailed the techniques local managers employed to advertise a film, using feature titles such as ‘What managers are doing’ and ‘Showmanship’. [3] The paper often awarded prizes to managers who ran the most enterprising campaigns. One particularly active manager operating in Portsmouth during the 1930s and 1940s, Patrick Reed, won a prize for the campaigns he ran while managing the Odeon cinema in North End in 1938. As part of his film promotion strategies he arranged tie-ins with a large number of shops to advertise fashion house drama Vogues of 1938 (1937), and overprinted the pay envelopes of the employees of several large companies in the town with notes about the musical film Something to Sing About (1937). [4]

Queens Cinema, Portsea, Portsmouth

Cinema managers faced a number of challenges, however, and not just competition from other cinemas operating in the area. One particularly sad event took place in April 1931 when the manager of the Queens cinema in Portsmouth, Mr H. E. Bingham, took his own life after a film failed to arrive in time for what would have undoubtedly been a busy Easter weekend, leaving a note written in chalk on the wall reading ‘NO SHOW. FINISH’. [5] The cinema was situated in Queen Street, near the naval barracks and Dockyard, and had attracted cinema-goers who lived in the immediate vicinity along with those working in and around the Dockyard and naval barracks. Problems started for Mr Bingham when the Council initiated a policy of slum clearance and moved lots of the district’s working-class residents to a new housing estate in Hilsea. [6] Mr Bingham had repeatedly complained to the Council about the effects of their policies on his business, and threatened to close the cinema a number of times due to the fall in takings at the box-office. [7] The failure of the film to arrive clearly tipped him over the edge.

Harry Sanders

For many managers, though, the cinema industry offered a long and productive career. One particularly successful manager, Harry Sanders, ran a number of cinemas in England from the early 1920s until the mid-1960s, most notably the State cinema (later renamed Granada) in Grantham, where he served for over 20 years until his retirement in 1963. [8] Sanders recognised the importance of film promotion and, in October 1933, wrote a piece for Kinematograph Weekly in which he advised managers to ‘Make your public curious’ in order to obtain ‘big box-office business’. [9] Many of Sanders campaigns were highly flamboyant, but one particularly noteworthy campaign occurred in 1952 when he arranged for a herd of elephants to be paraded through Grantham in order to promote the circus film The Greatest Show on Earth. What a sight it must have been for the residents of that modest Lincolnshire market town to see elephants roaming through their streets! The stunt was, of course, remarked upon for making quite an impact, and it is still mentioned in popular histories of the town whenever ‘Uncle Harry’ – as Sanders was affectionately known – is remembered. [10]

Promotional poster

Cinema managers like Sanders expended considerable energy ensuring that their businesses were successful. Unfortunately, most of their activities have been forgotten and the material they collated over the years has been lost to the historical record. I will, therefore, end this blog with an appeal. Harry Sanders kept much of the material that documented his life as a cinema manager – cinema ledgers, promotional material, exhibitors’ diaries, etc. – and his papers were donated by his son Howard to the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. If you have (or had) a relative who worked as a cinema manager, or know of any such material, please get in touch with me on robert.james@port.ac.uk. It would be a great way to add to our limited knowledge of cinema managers’ lives in the twentieth century.

Notes

[1] Cited in Jeffrey Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in Britain 1930-1939, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 11.

[2] Robert James, ‘Cinema-going in a Port Town, 1914-1951: Film Booking patterns at the Queens Cinema, Portsmouth’, Urban History, 40.2, 2013, pp. 315-335, p. 317.

[3] See, for example, Kinematograph Weekly, 12 February 1931, 35 and ibid., 30 June 1938, p. 52.

[4] Kinematograph Weekly, 7 April 1938, p. 50; ibid., 23 June 1938, p. 62.

[5] Sue Harper, ‘A Lower Middle-Class Taste Community in the 1930s: Admissions Figures at the Regent Cinema, Portsmouth, UK’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 24.2, 2004, pp. 565-587, p. 566.

[6] For an analysis of the Council’s housing policies in this period see C.P. Walker, ‘Municipal Enterprise: A Study of the Interwar Municipal Corporation of Portsmouth 1919-1939’ (unpublished University of Portsmouth MA dissertation, 2003).

[7] Evening News, 8 April 1931; Kinematograph Weekly, April 16 1931, p. 29.

[8] Harry Sanders Collection, National Science and Media Museum, Bradford.

[9] Ibid.

[10] See ‘Sanders, Harry – Uncle Harry put the fun into Grantham’, http://www.granthammatters.co.uk/sanders-harry/ (accessed 21 March, 2018).

March 30, 2018