The Box is a major cultural and heritage attraction and archive, which opened in Plymouth’s city centre in September 2020. Its collection, formally the South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA), is the regional film archive for the South West of England, comprising the combined programme libraries of Westward Television and Television South West (TSW). It also includes a significant number of donated film collections dating back to the early 1890s.
This film is part of Free
Sweltering at Looe
Tourists and townsfolk relax during the hottest summer on record
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Overview
Visitors enjoy the summer sunshine and relax in Looe, a quiet town in the south east of Cornwall. This is a day during the searingly hot summer of 1976. Tourists and townsfolk give in to the heat and play on the beach, take to the water and man their boats trying to stay cool in their 1970s flares.
It’s a scorcher! It was just too hot to do anything as a three-month heatwave hit the UK and the now infamous water-saving hosepipe ban came into our collective common vocabulary. People took to the coast in an attempt to flee the heat. Looe is a fishing town but its economy is dependent on tourism. The town is split by the river of the same name into East and West Looe. In recent memory Looe has been prone to flooding when storms combine with high tides to flood the lower part of Looe East.
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