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I've been doing the never-ending job of sorting through my (physical) filing cabinet, throwing out things that have long been out-of-date and of no further interest. Amazing how much junk one accumulates over the years, thinking that one day it will be useful/interesting in some vague way. Amongst it all, however, one sometimes finds something that is actually interesting.

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Above is a postcard with an aerial view of the Marconi Space & Defence Systems establishment at Hilsea, Portsmouth, dated 1977. The lower left entrance is for the Broad Oak works manufacturing area. The canteen is shown on the right of the entrance road and the main factory on the left. Another road crosses left to right from another entrance at the left of the area, nearly half-way up the photo, dividing Broad Oak from the Brown's Lane laboratories, where I worked between 1973 and 1996.

Roughly in the centre of that area is a cube-shaped building that housed the clean rooms where spacecraft and payloads were assembled and tested, a place that I came to know well during my time there. To its right is a group of buildings, one of which housed the environmental test area, though at this distance away in time I no longer remember which it was. Maybe someone else in MOGS can enlighten me, Ian Brighton perhaps?

In the top right part of the photo, the green area with curved tracks is the former Portsmouth Airport, limited at that time to light aircraft, following a crash that occurred shortly before I arrived, caused, I was told, by a larger craft landing on wet grass and skidding across to the boundary fence on the far side, where it ploughed through and onto the Eastern Road. The airport was eventually closed altogether and is now largely occupied by houses, but the Marconi address continued to be "Airport Service Road".

a13 2The Marconi ad. (above) was in a special newspaper that was produced for the occasion of "Showville", a show that used to be held annually at Brambles Farm on Hambledon Road, Waterlooville, about 10 miles north of Portsmouth and just across the road from where I was living in 1976 and adjacent to the site that was later occupied by Marconi Underwater Systems Limited.

I recall that my parents were visiting at the time and that my father really enjoyed taking my children there. Admission was 40p for adults and 10p for senior citizens and children! It was a great show and included a spectacular act where a fellow dived from an enormous height into a shallow pool that was engulfed in flames! I can't imagine what today's health and safety people would make of it!