Inglis Talking in Town
Wednesday, 6th Dec 2006 16:18

Football writer and architectural historian Simon Inglis will be speaking at Ipswich Town Hall on Thursday as part of Ipswich Museum's IPSWICH@PLAY Community Studies Project (7-9pm).

Simon's talk will focus on the Played in Britain project, the neglected gem that is Broomhill pool and Charles Buchan's Football Monthly. TWTD had a chat with him to gain a flavour.

What is Played in Britain all about?

The best way to understand the aims of Played in Britain is to look at the website, but essentially English Heritage have a very wide remit to research, to conserve and to celebrate the historic environment. However, up to recently it's never played any attention to sport, not in a formal sense. With so many changes occurring over the last 10 years or so, I have long felt that this was a matter which ought to be taken a lot more seriously.

When you go and watch your team, you're not just going to watch your team you're going to a place and the going to the place is as much part of the experience as the event itself. You can't separate the two. And that goes for anyone, whether they go swimming, play golf, go to a local bowling green, whatever. The place is part of the experience.

I've pulled together a large number of experts from around the country to spend the time between now and the Olympics doing a ‘domesday project' of British sport - pavilions, grandstands, bowling greens etc. But not just buildings, landscapes and waterscapes as well, simply so we don't lose any important buildings out of ignorance. Broomhill is a very good example of that.

We've already lost quite a few. In my backyard, as an Aston Villa supporter, the loss of the Trinity Road Stand, was a genuine loss, not just to Aston Villa but to football as a whole and a lot of buildings like that have gone.

Played in Britain is an attempt to redress that balance, to find out what is important and what we should be trying to save. Not just because we are always looking at nostalgia or preserving willy-nilly, but at enriching our contemporary environment.

Given that we have this great sporting heritage, isn't it important that in this generation we celebrate it and record it? Otherwise future generations will look back at us and say ‘what were they thinking of? How could they neglect such an important part of the British character?'

To a large extent Played in Britain is trying to bring our heritage to the front of the agenda so we can save places and buildings and artefacts and make sure that we are doing our utmost to protect that heritage for the future, and enjoy it for the present as well.

In Ipswich, Broomhill lido is a good example. It's a lovely facility, it's of national importance in terms of its design. We've already lost a lot of buildings of that character and Ipswich should be proud of it.

It's not a retrogressive step to put money into facility like that, any more than it is to put money into an old cinema or old art gallery.

Why is Charles Buchan's Football Monthly, featured in the latest Played in Britain book, so important from a heritage perspective?

It was the first ever football glossy. The period it covered, as Charles Buchan's Football Monthly, was from September 1951 until 1971. For the immediate post-war generation its significance cannot be underestimated.

It was the first colour football magazine at a time when gates at football were higher than they had ever been. And yet there was very little out there for the fans in terms of interesting material. There were other magazines, but they were very grey and were aimed in the main at pools punters and then you had the likes of the Saturday football specials, but were entirely results orientated.

There was nothing that sat back and looked at the game, so Football Monthly was incredibly important to a whole generation growing up in the fifties. It was the first attempt to bring football into the realm of leisure and entertainment in the post-war years and as the magazine came out in that era it has a certain amount of Ipswich content.

It was incredibly important to the generation which grew up in the mid-fifties. John Motson, who wrote to the magazine as a young boy, tells of how boys fought over the magazine because it was a very coveted thing. It was an instant collectors' item.

What do you think of the current trend of football clubs building off the shelf stadia?

It's perfectly legitimate. The stadia of old were just as much off the shelf industrial buildings, utilitarian, and that's what we're building today. I don't particularly like them, but had you been around in the 1920s, you'd have seen a lot of Archibald Leitch designed grounds and said they were all exactly the same, all that was different was the sign on the gable.

Football architecture has never been particularly inventive. With cricket, horse racing and swimming there's always been a much better standard of architecture than you have ever had with football.

That was one of the reasons we published Engineering Archie, the book on Leitch, because there are very few of his buildings left and it's important that we hang on to the ones we've got.

One thing we've found since Portman Road was redeveloped is that noise levels have come down. Is this something which is generally the case with new grounds?

The new Arsenal stadium and the new Wembley have got acoustic panels built into the roof in order to enhance the sound of the crowd. That's something which needs to be done from scratch rather than adapting an existing stand.

Overall though, I think it's true to say that fans today are quieter than they were in the past. You could go further and say that it was only a period between about 1960 and 1990 where you had loud crowds. In the thirties and forties there was no chanting. It's a relatively new phenomenon which might be said to have passed.

You just have to look at the kind of people who are going to football now. In the sixties and seventies a large percentage of the crowd was male and aged between 15 and 25 - those who make the most noise. If you look at that percentage now, it's obvious why we're making less noise. Crowds are older, more affluent and we're sitting down.

The evening will also provide an opportunity for a private viewing of the IPSWICH@PLAY exhibition. People have scoured their lofts, garages and cupboards for pictures, memorabilia or anything else linked to their personal sporting histories and to the town's sporting heritage.

The display is constantly changing as items are added - everything from speedway bikes to rollerskates to photos of Portman Road in times gone by and even back issues of TWTD.

Admission to Inglis's talk is free and there will be a pay bar. For further information call 01473 433550.

The IPSWICH@PLAY exhibition is open in Gallery Three at the Town Hall Tuesdays to Saturdays from 10am until 5pm.

Photo: Action Images

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