History of Portsmouth

"The most exciting thing going on in Europe, if not the world": welcome to Milton Keynes circa 1973.

The colourful bustle of Portsmouth's oldest street market features in this 1977 film – where traders and shoppers mix under the brooding presence of the infamous Tricorn Centre.

Six Shropshire villages combine and the new town of Telford is born.

Bricks and mortar makes way for concrete and reinforced steel as Wolverhampton sweeps the past aside in a modernist town planning utopia.

A fascinating film showing the cathedral city of Chichester before the arrival of its ringroad and the pedestrianisation of its Roman streets.

A rare glimpse of early Edwardian Manchester when the horse-drawn tram still reigned supreme.

Witness that last years of Hilsea Barracks in this short and wintry film from F Howard - featuring a community of buildings that have vanished from the map

Summer in the early 60s is captured in this short film by F Howard which features divers at Hilsea Lido, Portsmouth's Garrison Church and numerous Isle of Wight ferries

Travel back to the Portsmouth of open markets, period shops, bomb sites, congested car parks, workers on bicycles and holiday crowds - all in glorious black & white

Hilsea Lido is the venue for this amazing short film from 1964 - where crowds of kids splash about, swim, slide and jump from high boards while parents look calmly on

The roads around Portsmouth are about to be transformed with concrete and steel in this 1970 film from W J Evans.

You can almost smell the chlorine in this delightful film about Hilsea's Lido in the late 1940s - which today is one of the last of its kind in the UK that is still open to the public.

A young Palestinian woman crosses the Israeli border illegally to find her long-lost brother, who she hopes will be her ticket to a new life.

Beautiful NHS fundraiser, setting Michael Rosen’s poem to powerful archive images.

The UK's first purpose-built mosque welcomes a huge crowd of worshippers - and newsreel cameras!

A vicar is caught flirting with an improperly-dressed chorus girl in this saucy silent comedy.

A volunteer cavalry regiment is enthusiastically welcomed home after active service in South Africa.

All ashore! Passengers disembark and crew offload after a long Atlantic crossing.