Press Release - Plymouth Interactive History, Sun 19th May

Hidden Plymouth held our first major event, Plymouth Interactive History, at Devonport Guildhall as part of Plymouth History Festival month on Sunday 19^th May. Five months of planning finally came together gathering a selection of local historians, Civil War re-enactors, authors, researchers, history, conservation & interest groups for the first in a series of events designed to further promote local history at roots level, interacting with the community & sparking exciting new connections for the future.

With over 200 through the doors throughout the day, the exhibitors in the main hall were kept occupied with a steady stream of people chatting, asking questions & visually excited with the displays around the room. In the former Mayor’s Parlour, the atmosphere & acoustics were well received with presentations, Q&A sessions & slideshows ranging from Pymouth Civil War, WWII in Plymouth, Spies, caves & mines, regeneration & conservation.

With the Devonport Column only opening the week before, it was great for the people attending to also have the chance to finally climb the steps to an amazing 360 view of Plymouth. A total of 87 climbed the steps throughout the day. Many thanks to all at Real Ideas Organisation for hosting the first Hidden Plymouth event to the staged in the city, especially Claire & Louise who were a great help. Be sure to pop down & show your support by taking a Column tour when in Devonport!

Here is a review from the excellent team at Devonport Guildhall

http://www.devonportguildhall.org/2013/05/20/plymouth-interactive-history-a-resounding-success/


We were taken aback by just how busy we actually were on the day & although planned to take photos of each participant, it never did due to the time flying chatting with the public & learning new stories from Plymouth history. To that, we asked those who attended via our Facebook page to share their photos & feedback from the event, or leave a comment here that will be reposted to this review. After all, without your support on the day it would never happen again & we welcome your thoughts to have input for where we can better the event! Thank you to all who made the event the success that it was! Keep following from updates from our readers....

The All Clear

Our first limited print is available from February entitled The All Clear. It depicts a modern view of how colours were used inside an air raid shelter. The green of the all clear overshadowing the red fading of an air raid in progress, & the bright light of a would-be ARP warden protruding through the blackout to calmly direct you outside......but to what?

Stories tell of emerging after a heavy raid close-by & being confronted with total devastation. Homes flattened from direct hits & on fire from incendiary devices that fell in their thousands. This underground warren of passageways hold many stories that have never come to light & through the Faces of Plymouth Blitz, we will bring you new unpublished accounts from the people who were there.

If you would like yours or a family members history to be part of a massive online archive, please get in touch via info@hiddenplymouth.co.uk

Faces of Plymouth Blitz

Over the past four years we have met with many locals who experienced the Plymouth Blitz, & this year we are looking to speak with more to gather stories & photos from the time. Our research will be collated as part of the Faces of Plymouth Blitz project we have running throughout the year & we urge you to get in touch with us if you would like to share your memories for future generations to learn more about their past.

One of our readers, Lucy, recently got in touch with some fantastic memories from her mum, Mary, whom we have since spoken with to gather detailed information of her experiences in WWII & shed more light on the deep air raid shelter at Hexton Tunnel.

Here is a short excerpt of the full account that Lucy kindly mailed us;

Mary Outhwaite (nee Hine) was born in January 1938, and lived on Hooe Road, the main road into Hooe, until she was an adult.  She remembers the Hexton Hill tunnel and the Breakwater fort.

When the air raid alarm started, my mother would pick me up take me to the bottom of the garden, over the fence, through the fields and down the steep path that leads to the tunnel.  At times the tunnel would be full of people, sometimes squeezed in like sardines – my mother said that one night it was so airless in there, a match wouldn’t stay lit - some of the people would have made makeshift beds.  Mother and I would often sit on some type of wooden bench until the all clear sounded, and we would go home.  There was no door at the entrance of the tunnel, and some people would stand and watch the planes and bombing.  My father wasn’t with us as he was in the home guard and stationed at the top of Murder Hill (Hooe Hill), where there is still a sentry box near the top on the left, where the ground starts to level out.  He was stationed on the guns there, I suppose firing at incoming enemy aircraft. 

My father used to rent a piece of land which overlooked the tunnel, and I used to play there.  When I was about nine or ten (after the war), I would visit the tunnel with friends and walk right through, although there was a slight kink in it and you couldn’t see daylight from one end to the other.  One day we could see a suitcase in the entrance to the tunnel, we didn’t approach, but went home briefly, probably ten minutes at the most.  When we came back, our picnic had been ransacked – oddly, the cheese pasties had gone but the rock buns remained; the suitcase had gone.  The tunnel is on the edge of Hooe Lake, local people were convinced that Lord Haw Haw, the famous propagandist, lived close by on a house boat, and was seen sitting in the bar of the Royal Oak which is also on the edge of the lake.  This may have been after the war although he was tried at Nuremburg and subsequently hanged. 

My grandmother, Mary Hine, realised that this steep track to the tunnel was not an easy one to follow in the dark, so she painted marker stones white to aid vision by night. I last went into the tunnel about ten years ago, from the lake side, it seemed so much smaller!  It was about five foot wide, and a couple of feet drop on either side of the main path.  It was being used for storage, and it didn’t go back very far.

A collapse in the tunnel today denies access to the other entrance that Mary's family used

There we have it, just one amazing story that we intend to build on & all thanks to one of our readers getting in touch to share their family history. If you would like to feature your family as part of the series, please get in touch via info@hiddenplymouth.co.uk

Keep following for future updates & amazing memories from the children of Plymouth Blitz. Here is a video from Steve Johnson showing an ITV documentary from 2001.

Plymouth History - Get Involved!

Welcome to our first post of 2013, the year we take Hidden Plymouth to the next chapter & get more interactive with our readers via exhibitions, talks & we are now welcoming more public contributions to our research & online archive. In collaboration with Cyberheritage, we proudly bring you Plymouth Interactive History after months of research & planning, uncovering new stories & photos to add to those already collated in the past by local historians, researchers & archivists before us. Our new online archive will be available to the public from late February, as part of a brand new worldwide resource website launching right here in Plymouth with thousands of images to view. We are currently archiving a collection of over 10,000 slides & photos spannning 50 years that was kindly donated to us. Many of the photos feature old views of Plymouth showing the change throughout the years.

We have a number of drop-in sessions at selected locations in & around Plymouth throughout 2013 & offer a free archiving service of old documents, photographs, negatives & slides. For further information on dates & venues we are coming to please drop us an e-mail to info@hiddenplymouth.co.uk or alternatively, we can arrange for you to pop into our office by appointment only. In turn, these will also be deposited in community & national archives making them accessible to as many people as possible to gain a better understanding of their local history.

Plymouth Interactive History is your history, your stories & visual memories documented for the digital age. It offers a wealth of resources available electronically & to a worldwide audience, that can help in many areas in assisting future research such as your family tree or local history education for schools providing the next generation with tools to research their past & learn about their heritage.

Our first major project is Faces of Plymouth Blitz featuring previously undocumented stories from those who witnessed it first hand. We have had some amazing feedback from Plymothians since our call for stories of WWII memories to add to the archives. As you can imagine, it is a very lengthy process collating all the information & we put out another call for you to step forward take your part in a little bit of Plymouth history. We are in much need of contributions where history is lacking at some vital sites in & surrounding the city during WWII & urge you to get in touch if you have any information on the following areas under ongoing investigation;

• Home Guard in Plymouth & surrounding districts including the highly secretive Auxilliary Units AKA Churchill's Resistance. 
• Heavy Anti-Aircraft Gun Batteries
• ARP Wardens & Firewatchers, also Fire Guard Messengers who were volunteer children aged between 14-18 
• Air Raid Shelters - How many of you have an Anderson Shelter in your garden? Do you have memories or stories from the times in air raid shelters? Especially looking for further info on the following air raid shelters that have been lost to demolition; Ker Street, Devonport - Pomphlett Quarry Tunnel - Victoria Park - Mount Wise area - North Prospect School - York Street - Devonport Market & Pounds House ARP Control Centre - Millbay Laundry
• Barrage Balloon sites
• Family members who used Nissen Huts for temporary accommodation or shops
• Were you a Blitz baby? Get in touch!

Please get in touch via History Plymouth

We leave you with a photograph recently sent to us from a reader & featured on Cyberheritage....a rare photo showing the bombing of St Andrews Church on March 21st, 1941. Original source of the photograph is unknown therefore please contact us if you hold the copyright & we will gladly credit in due course.

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