Radio Times
JUDE MONTAGUE introduces a new community history project focusing on our economic past
A new radio project is taking to the air, devised by members of Parchment Trust, providers of day services for disabled adults based on the Ponswood Industrial Estate in St Leonards.
Parchment Radio will bring listeners creative radio programmes with music, sound art, local history, humour, interviews and conversations, poetry and experimental ideas. The radio programme is being facilitated and curated by Lifesize CIC, an organisation based in Hastings and St Leonards that specialises in the provision of music and arts activities for wellbeing. Lifesize have also been working with a group in Folkestone, bringing day-centre users together in both towns by working on the same radio programmes.
The first of two investigative projects tackled by the groups is the St Leonards history project, ‘Ponswood Stories’, where members of Parchment Trust have been looking back at the industrial history of their local estate and discovering many stories of the people and firms who worked here, a good number of which were electronic and audio-visual businesses.
The Hastings history of television manufacture begins with the incredible story of inventor John Logie Baird, who carried out the first television transmission here in the 1920s. This was recently explored in an exhibition about the scientist at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery curated by Geraldine Swayne and me. The Radio Group visited the show and even created their own prototype inventions inspired by John Logie Baird’s creativity.
Local people connected with the Ponswood Industrial Estate were interviewed for the radio show, including postman Chris Mckenna, from the Royal Mail’s St Leonards Delivery Office on Drury Lane, in the middle of the estate. Another set of guests were Andrew Kötting, an artist, writer and filmmaker who works from a unit nearby, and his daughter Eden Kötting, also an artist, who has created many paintings and films with her father. Andrew answered questions about many aspects of his and Eden’s work and life, even explaining the umlaut in their surname.
Alan Esdaile talked about running Masons Music on the Ponswood Estate and Queens Road. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, he and his team sold many singles and LPs from their shop, alongside stickers, patches, badges, scarves, t-shirts and bags. Alan now organises the monthly meet-up group, SMART Seventies Music and Retro Talk.
Lots of people offered stories on social media about working at the audio-visual manufacturing companies on the estate. Jayne Elizabeth said, “I remember the careers people coming round asking which factory you wanted to work at, there were so many and so much employment back then.” Another contributor, Chris, commented, “I sat in a cubicle for six months testing circuit boards. It was mind-numbing and the 7:30am start was a target I often failed to meet if I missed the first bus in the morning.”
The large firms of Kolster-Brandes / ITT have now shut down, although a few smaller companies are still making specialised electronic and related parts locally. Dennis reflected on his life on the production line: “Looking back it was quite tough but gave me an experience of life I wouldn’t otherwise have had.”
Tom O’Hara from Parchment Trust reckons the radio project had offered a unique and meaningful opportunity to the participants, encouraging creativity, curiosity and real personal development. He added that their members, adults with learning disabilities, had developed “transferable skills that will benefit them far beyond the project itself”.
The radio show Ponswood Stories will include original music and sound effects created using homemade instruments developed on previous projects with Lifesize Director Sam Dook.
Along the way there was so much to discover while creating original creative radio pieces, with lots of laughter and learning. The shows are currently being edited and produced and will shortly be available to all listeners. The launch will take place as part of the XMTR Festival of Radio Art in September 2025.
‘Ponswood Stories’ is supported by Historic England’s ‘Everyday Heritage’ project, facilitated by Lifesize CIC (lifesize.org.uk) in collaboration with Parchment Trust Ltd
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