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Old 17th Mar 2023, 8:44 pm   #1
Pundles
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Default Festival of Britain

I was told that I attended the Festival of Britain in 1951 but wasn’t born.
Anecdotal evidence is that my mother passed through the turnstile and it locked leaving my father outside.
Apparently she was the certain number visitor to the festival and as such was awarded a radio of the kind used by the French resistance during WWII.
Unfortunately she died five years later when I was four and I was raised in childrens homes.
I have tried to find out more about it but as I don’t know what date it was my searches have been in vain.
As I was born 8 Sept, it was between when it opened and then.
If anyone can help I’d be very grateful.
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Old 17th Mar 2023, 9:22 pm   #2
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

Around 4 May to 30 September for the main site;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_of_Britain
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Old 17th Mar 2023, 11:58 pm   #3
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

My father, E M Stanhope, worked on the exhibits.
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Old 18th Mar 2023, 1:38 am   #4
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

There's a BBC documentary on iPlayer, but it's only there for another week.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...rave-new-world

Regards,

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Old 18th Mar 2023, 7:56 am   #5
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

Thanks Tony. We saw it on TV.
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Old 18th Mar 2023, 9:33 am   #6
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

I went to it, i was very young, main thing I remember is the Skylon a tall suspended display.
The Royal Festival Hall is a "left over" from the festival

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Old 18th Mar 2023, 11:05 am   #7
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

Here's an Antex leaflet featuring their TV aerials that were used at the South Bank. The dish on top of the shot tower was apparently used to bounce radar signals off the moon when it was above the horizon.

I was 4 when my parents took me, and I don't remember anything about the TV or the radar exhibition. I was more interested in the two partly-assembled District Line Underground carriages that you could walk through and see things like the cabling and the pneumatic door operating mechanisms and other stuff that was normally hidden away. About the only other things I remember were the cascading fountain, the Skylon, and not being able to have an ice-cream: food was still rationed and I think coupons might have been needed.
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Old 18th Mar 2023, 11:07 am   #8
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

That BBC4 [great channel] Doc has been shown quite a few times and may appear again soon, given the repeat pattern of items currently. There was a small Murphy set specially made for the Festival and the large murphy 188 "Baffle" model was also exhibited. A "Festival of Britain" search "up top" brings in quite a few references from this site re radios sets and other Festival items/memories. The F O B is often described as a very welcome relief during post war austerity and it was certainly very well attended, futuristic and probably the closest thing to Disney World in the UK.

Not as good as the Great Exhibition [1851] perhaps but better than the vastly expensive Tent [with not much in it] Tony Blair erected in Greenwich for the Millenium [2000]. If he'd just waited until 2001 [a] there would have been a nice sincronicity with the dates [b] there would have been time to fill the exhibition with a cornucopia of items and [c] Kubrick's amazing 2001 A Space Odyssey could have given a Sci-Fi focus similar to the Skylon. He lived in Britain for most of his life, near St Albans! I suppose the next F O B could have been 2101

It is said that Winston Churchill didn't like the Festival of Britain and had it all quickly demolished. That surprises me and I'm never quite sure why? eg he was quoted as saying "the people have had a hard time!", even when he lost the Election after the war! He seems to have ordered the [apparent] destruction of all Enigma related hardware and documents as well but there is an explanation there. It's said he was very concerned to not to lose that technical advantage, given the new and real threat from Soviet Russia. The "Chain Home" early warning stations were upgraded and new establishments created. There's one not far from Bexhill

Dave W

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Old 18th Mar 2023, 12:50 pm   #9
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

As an eleven year old, my father and I went to the Festival of Britain.

I remember the "Dome of Discovery" and the "Skylon." I remember reading in our paper that it symbolised Britain at the time. "No visible means of support."

Memories of individual exhibits are fading.

But I remember one thing that made a lasting impression on me.
We had a cup of tea and a cake in a café whilst we were there.

We sat on chairs like these.
Never seen anything like them before.

[img]********************4sWX7qJ/3802.webp[/img]
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Old 18th Mar 2023, 2:20 pm   #10
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I remember it well, went with the school when I was 12, as my only real interest was 'electronics' I found it very interesting. Started work in the TV trade in 1954.

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Old 18th Mar 2023, 2:28 pm   #11
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

My memories of the Festivalof Britain centre around a Bush DAC90 and the converted escort carrier which became Exhibition Ship Campania. https://talesfromthesupplydepot.blog...p-photographs/

The ship was converted into a floating exhibition to take the Festival to people outside the main event in London and followed a controversial route (https://hansard.parliament.uk/common...orneExhibition)) around Britain which included Dundee, which is where I was taken to visit it.

In the morning, my father had decided to dust out the interior of our DAC90 which at 4 years old was my contemporary and the only electronic device in our concrete slab pre-fab. I think he had marked the valve locations on the instruction leaflet which he kept with a sales brochure featuring a couple, in their late 20s or early 30s, she dresssed fashionably and he smartly, strolling around happily between the top-side components of a giant radio chassis.

My father was keen to take me to see the exhibition but there was an age limit of 5 years old so he and my mother conconted the cunning plan of dressing me in my sister's school blazer to disguise me as admissable. It must have worked because I have a vague memory of walking through the hanger deck feeling we were very like the couple in the bush brochure.

I still have the DAC90 to remind me of it all.

PMM
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Old 18th Mar 2023, 3:43 pm   #12
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

I'm sure my Dad would have visited the FOB as he lived in Watford at the time so not to far for my grandparent to travel.

Battersea Pleasure Gardens were open for another 20 years but closed after the tragic accident on the big dipper in 1972.
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Old 18th Mar 2023, 4:30 pm   #13
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

Not a lot of people know that the late Rupert Neve (of studio mixing desk fame) was a design engineer on the huge Festival of Britain PA system. At the time he was employed by Rediffusion who won the PA contract. This was before Rupert branched out on his own with CQ Audio and then the well-known mixing desk company which continues to prosper today.

The attached photo shows a corner of a pavilion next to the Festival Hall (to the left of the tree) carrying an impressive array of horn projector speakers. Judging by the number of speakers visible just in this corner, it seems likely that a total amplifier power of at least a kilowatt would have been involved. Rediffusion were of course familiar with high power audio amplifiers for their broadcast distribution systems. I recall Rupert telling me how his boss gave him a tricky output transformer to design as a distraction from worry when his wife Evelyn was due to give birth to their first child.

Martin
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Old 18th Mar 2023, 10:01 pm   #14
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Default Re: Festival of Britain

Quote:
Originally Posted by pmmunro View Post
My memories of the Festivalof Britain centre around a Bush DAC90 and the converted escort carrier which became Exhibition Ship Campania. https://talesfromthesupplydepot.blog...p-photographs/

The ship was converted into a floating exhibition to take the Festival to people outside the main event in London and followed a controversial route (https://hansard.parliament.uk/common...orneExhibition)) around Britain which included Dundee, which is where I was taken to visit it.

In the morning, my father had decided to dust out the interior of our DAC90 which at 4 years old was my contemporary and the only electronic device in our concrete slab pre-fab. I think he had marked the valve locations on the instruction leaflet which he kept with a sales brochure featuring a couple, in their late 20s or early 30s, she dresssed fashionably and he smartly, strolling around happily between the top-side components of a giant radio chassis.

My father was keen to take me to see the exhibition but there was an age limit of 5 years old so he and my mother conconted the cunning plan of dressing me in my sister's school blazer to disguise me as admissable. It must have worked because I have a vague memory of walking through the hanger deck feeling we were very like the couple in the bush brochure.

I still have the DAC90 to remind me of it all.

PMM
Some Pathe footage here showing the site (including the ‘lead shot tower’ with the dish on top of it) and the Campania etc.

https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/218063/
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