General Chat

I have just found this thread, sorry for nott seeing it originally.
I remember one small part of it very well. In 1951 I and some of my school mates were invited to perfom a dance routine a at a theatre which is now ppart of the University along the Mile End Road in east London UK
.We represented the flowers of the season and I was a purple crocus . It was wonderful and I discovered tha I loved being on the stage!! but that is another story.

Sharron, see we hoarders have our uses lol How lovely that you had those things from Audrey.

Elizabeth, I am glad you got several responses I wish I could remember more about it all but can almost picture where the clock stood. I think I will contact a chap I know on our local paper and ask if he has any info or pictures that will show where it was situated.

Am almost 100% sure it was here in Norwich but can't find anything to confirm it properly.

Lizx

Dear All

Hello

Hope you are all okay.

Thank you very much for joining in and replying.

I really enjoy reading them and I appreciate it a lot.

This event seems to have brought back happy memories.

As ever, take very gentle care
Very best wishes
xx

I wasn't even a twinkle then but my lovely Audrey,my sort of surrogate mum,was a hoarder and when she died I became the proud owner of a rubber reindeer,some very old Christmas decorations,lots of other stuff like that AND a Festival of Britain guidebook.It is excellent.

I was ten years old, and went to the Festival on a school trip. My lasting memory was that while sitting eating my packed lunch, an American couple asked if they could take my photo. I said yes. They then said that if I gave them my address they would send me a copy. My address was scribbled on a piece of paper, and off they went.
I forgot about it. Then just before Christmas that year, a parcel arrived for me from Portland Oregon USA. I had never received anything in the post, so was very excited.
Inside the parcel was a copy of the photo of me at the Festival, chocolate, a pair of gloves, a book about Native American Indians, and a Silver Dollar, which I still have.

Tec.

I was working at Dartford southern hospital, and with another girl and a couple of lads we went, but at time were not much interested in anything but the Skylon and the funfair! Well, we wer only 16!

Nudging so that I can find it later.
My mother, aunt and I stayed with friends who lived at Battersea park mansions but unfortunately I don't remember too much as I was only 7 at the time. I have a photo of me sitting on a pony and the daughter of my mums friends standing beside it. So I know that there were pony rides :))
I have other photos of the visit but non showing the festival.

things I remember.........the allegedly "boy proof" buttons on some of the exhibits.....in the Dome of Discovery....a water"clock" consisting of graduated sized buckets all filling with water in turn and emptying into the next larger bucket, of course the skylon, which at night was illuminated so that the supporting cables were invisible(well hard to see, anyway)all sorts of cottage industries, like paper making....

AH! t'was a long time ago and me memory grows dim

Bob

Before my time LOL! :))) xx

My brother still has the programme our father brought back from the Festival of Britain. We were not able to go, as I think it was a village bus trip organised by the British Legion.

I have a small necklace of red, white and blue beads, of no value, but the fact that Dad brought it home for me!

Elisabeth x

Gentle nudge please

Thank you
xx

Enjoy reading this later Cane. I will put up the site info so you can see a pic of the clock, it was amazing.

http://manchesterhistory.net/bellevue/guinness.html

Lizx

"N"
a great read,so saving for later xx

So popular was the clock that, following the Festival of Britain, Guinness received a number of requests from a variety of organizations to borrow the clock. In response they commissioned two smaller, travelling versions and the first one was loaned to Morecambe in 1952 as part of their illumination celebration. Then it went to Manchester where it was displayed on the 5th floor of Lewis'. The clocks toured Britain for 7 years, one even went to the U.S.A. and two went to Ireland.


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In 1959 the Guinness Time Piece or Guinness Clock appeared. It was even bigger and more elaborate than the Festival Clock. It weighed four tons and was made up of three sections. It was designed by John Lansdell and Willy Szoomanski and built by F. B. Elcom Limited. It was first displayed at the Guinness Bicentenial Garden Party before going on tour. Appropriately the first place it was sent to was the Battersea Pleasure Gardens. I suspect that it was one of these clocks that appeared at Belle Vue. The travelling clocks were finally withdrawn and scrapped in 1966

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I think it might have been one on tour as I am sure I saw it in Norwich tho and remember being fascinated by it.

Lizx

I have some confused memories, I was only 4 at the time. I am not sure if we went to the Battersea Park festival - I think we might have if that was the time we stayed with my Mum's sister and her family near London, she lived in Orpington, St Paul's Cray and other places over the years and we visited a few times.

I know I went to something where there was the Guinness Clock, see below:

One of the attractions that I remember from my years of visiting Belle Vue is the Guinness Clock. It stood not far from the Hyde Road Entrance in the area that had once been the Centenary Gardens. This animated device drew crowds of people for its regular performances.

There were, in fact, two kinds of Guinness Clocks. The earliest was more accurately referred to as the Guinness Festival Clock because it made its first appearance in 1951 at the Festival of Britain. This event was designed to display British achievements in science and technology and was staged at various venues in London. 1951 was a significant date because it marked the centenary of The Great Exhibition at The Crystal Palace.

Battersea Pleasure Gardens was one of the venues and it was here that the more "frivolous" exhibits were located. The Guinness Festival Clock was one such exhibit and it was the brain child of the company's advertising manager, Martin Pick.

The clock was the product of three creative forces. It was actually built by the London Clockmakers Baume and Co. It was an elaborate piece of machinery incorporating nine reversible electric motors and three synchronous clocks.

It was designed by Jan Lewitt and George Him. Lewitt and Him were renowned designers who formed a partnership in 1933 and worked together for 21 years in Poland.

Jan Lewitt was born on April 3 1907 in Czestochowa, Poland, where he spent his childhood. After school he travelled for three years in Europe and the Middle East before beginning work as a self-taught graphic artist and designer. He became an artist while trying to make a living in thirteen different occupations, among them as a worker in machine building, in soap manufacturing, in a distillery, as a bricklayer, farm worker, compositor, and architects' draftsman. In 1933 he met George Him and they formed the Lewitt-Him partnership.

George Him was born in Lodz, Poland in 1900, the son of a well-to-do shoe manufacturer called Himmelfarb. He went to school in Warsaw and then attended university in Moscow, Berlin and finally Bonn where he obtained a Ph.D in Comparative Religion. He then changed direction and spent four years studying at the Academy for Graphic Arts, Leipzig. From 1928 he practised as a graphic designer. For a while he freelanced in Germany, but there was not much work there so he returned to Poland in 1933, where he met Jan Lewitt.


Much of their fame came from book illustrations. In 1934 they illustrated the Polish book "Lokomotywa". In 1942 they were commission to illustrate a book by Diana Ross called "The Little Red Engine Gets a Name". During World War II Lewitt-Him worked for the British Ministry of Information, the Post Office, the Ministry of Food and others, also for the Polish and Dutch Governments in exile producing mainly posters. In addition to the Festival Clock, Lewitt and Him also designed murals for the Education Pavilion at the Festival of Britain.

At the heart of the Festival Clock though was the troop of familiar Guinness characters and animals created by John Gilroy whose advertising posters are still synonymous with Guinness. Every quarter of an hour these familiar "actors" performed a four and a half minute routine that captivated its audience. The Guinness zoo keeper with the 'tash was prominently displayed. This was, in fact, a caricature of Gilroy himself. The clock also displayed a number of Gilroy's animals including the ostrich, pelican, bear, lion, tortoise, kangaroo, crocodile, a kinkajou and of course the Guinness toucan. During the 1930s - 1950s period Guinness had also incorporated characters from Alice in Wonderland in its advertising campaigns, so in designing the Festival Clock they also incorporated The Mad Hatter.

John Gilroy was born in 1898, the son of the well-known marine artist, John William Gilroy. His talent as an artist won him a scholarship to Armstrong College but his education there was interrupted by a tour of duty in the army. He served in the Royal Field Artillery under T. E. Lawrence. In 1928 Gilroy, by then a commercial artist, joined Benson's Advertising Agency in London. When the agency won the Guinness account Gilroy was assigned to it along with the copywriter Dorothy L. Sayers, better known as the creator of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels.

Dear All

Hello

On 30 September 1951, the Festival of Britain ended on the South Bank in London.

The massed bands of the Brigade of Guards played as the Union flag and the Festival flag were taken down for the last time.

Earlier, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Geoffrey Fisher, addressed a service of thanksgiving held in the Festival Hall.

The aim of the exhibition was to raise the nation's spirits after the war years and to celebrate the best of British art, design and industry. Some 8.5 million people have paid to visit the exhibition which included the Royal Festival Hall, the 200 ft (61m) Skylon - a vertical feature in steel and aluminium with no visible means of support - and the Dome of Discovery, an aluminium display centre containing a planetarium and other features.

Its purpose was to display British goods through all aspects of life from the home, to school, transport, industry and the countryside.

A transformed Battersea Park has attracted some eight million visitors with its live displays of acrobatics, fairground and nightly firework displays.

Elsewhere in the country communities have been encouraged to celebrate the Festival. Many projects for restoring old buildings have begun, trees have been planted and new commemorative signs erected.

Exhibitions of various sorts have been held - from a Regency Exhibition staged at the Pavilion in Brighton to a display of printed books in the Kent village of Tenterden, the birthplace of William Caxton.

In a nationwide broadcast this evening, Dr Fisher said the Festival had been a "real family party" in which everyone had played a part and from which there would be many lasting benefits.

He said: "The Festival has set the standard by which we shall face the future. The Festival, like the Dome of Discovery itself, was marked by imagination and ingenuity...and a pride for what Britain has achieved in all things."

Did you go to any events during the festival year?

Take gentle care
Very best wishes
xx