CLIPS of local news reel and amateur film have been edited together by Independent Studios UK Ltd of Norwich to look at life in Ipswich in the 1960s.

David Kindred

CLIPS of local news reel and amateur film have been edited together by Independent Studios UK Ltd of Norwich to look at life in Ipswich in the 1960s.

This new DVD “Ipswich in the Sixties” contains interesting clips of life in the town.

I was twenty in 1966 so this is all very familiar to me although it all looks like an even earlier era. The wide range of subjects taken from both local television news footage and amateur film captures football at Portman Road including the game which made Ipswich champions of Division One in 1962, Dave Bickers in action at Shrubland Park, Stock Car racing at Foxhall Stadium and the Suffolk Show.

There are street clearances and radical new architecture, smart new panda police cars and a bustling local airport. The shots and interview inside a home due to be demolished during a slum clearance programme are both shocking and revealing with families living in dreadful conditions.

The likes of trolley buses and street scenes are interesting to both those who lived through the period and anybody interested in the social history of the town.

There are clips and interviews with the queue at the Gaumont Theatre for Beatles tickets in 1964. There is even a few seconds of the Beatles on stage from an amateur colour film taken from the balcony.

Also on sale in the series is the DVD Ipswich Past with film from 1912 to the 1960s.

The DVD is a follow up to the “Ipswich Past: The Town Our Parents Knew” released last year. Ipswich Past looked back at the history of the town from the early days of film through sixty years of change.

The Your Region on Film DVDs cost �9.99 each from www.archivefilmshop.co.uk, and the Ipswich Tourist Information Centre, as well as selected bookshops and retail outlets.