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There aren't too many cities with the sort of historical pedigree that Portsmouth has, and yet there are times when some of us tend to take all that for granted, as we find ourselves swept up in the confusion that is life today.
However, Robin Kay and his team of helpers, which include volunteers who give up their time to make this programme possible, are working constantly, firstly to bring the past alive and secondly to ensure that there is a recording of as much of it as possible for those who will come after us - children, grandchildren and generations yet to be born.
It's a gigantic task, as the history team is still quite small, but the people of Portsmouth and South East Hampshire have been steadily rallying to the cause - and listener numbers are growing! |
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| History Show team members Robin & Simon making another local history programme on a Sunday morning at the new Express FM studios in Arundel Street. |
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Over the centuries, many of Portsmouth's original records were lost or destroyed, courtesy originally of French pirates who delighted in raiding the area in the Middle Ages and setting fire to anything that would burn - meaning almost everything, in a town that was largely made up of wooden buildings!
Then came the Germans, in World War II, with fire bombs gutting the original Guildhall and hundreds of other buildings destroyed in the constant air raids, but even Hitler and Goebels couldn't destroy the spirit of the people of Portsmouth.
And it is the memories of those people who lived through that most terrible of eras, and the memories of those who have come after, but who are now still a part of Portsmouth's history, as are we all, though we may not yet know it. |
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| Portsmouth Guildhall, pictured here circe 1900, when it was still a Town Hall - German incendiaries gutted the beautiful interior, and it would be 1959 before that damage was finally made good. |
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Janice Burkinshaw (left) is the lady who spends many hours, poring over the records of the wartime air raids, records which give an account of days and times, buildings damaged and destroyed, and people killed and wounded.
Those of us who were too young to have experienced The Blitz ourselves will have heard accounts from parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts - people whose courage was tested and cannot now be doubted. |
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But it's not just about wars and ships, sailors and soldiers - the History Programme seeks to paint an audio portrait of what life was like in Portsmouth and the area around for as far back as there are people still alive to remember it - and some of their memories do indeed stretch back a long way
From the days of "real" sweet shops and "proper" breweries and those "golden ages" when the privy was at the bottom of the yard and quite possibly shared with three other houses, through the days that saw the coming of the cinema, the airplane, the hovercraft and motorways - has there ever been a hundred year period when so much has changed?
The Victorians and their earlier 19th century predecessors probably thought the same about the era in which they lived, but the twentieth century saw a world move on from the middle years of industrial revolution, with gas lighting and early combustion engines, into the age that would produce jet travel, space rockets, and men planting flags on the moon. Now that has been a truly momentous journey!
So why not join the programme every Sunday morning at 9am, or catch up via the Listen Again feature on-line (there are click-on connections within these pages to make it easy for you) and enjoy a weekly hour of nostalgia and - for the younger listeners - real life history education? |
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| John Hatherley recalls his days as a young "mudlarker", and his memories of the war years are both stark and humorous. You can hear John at the start of each programme, and at intervals throughout, as he reminds us what we're doing, when we were doing it, where we're going - and why! |
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And, as we move forwards over the next few weeks, listeners of all ages will be able to see for themselves some of the sights that our contributors recall, as we build this website into a visual companion for what we want to make the best local history show on the airwaves.
If you have any photographs, prints, or even artifacts that we could photograph to enhance these pages and share with our growing number of fans, please let us know - but PLEASE don't send things through the post.
Contact us and we'll arrange to personally call, so you don't have to risk losing irreplacable family treasures, many of which will have the sort of personal memories attached to them that make them worth far more than money.
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A hand-coloured print from an original photo taken around 1900, showing Southsea Common, the Queens Hotel in the distance and electric trams and horse-drawn carriages. |
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