Pondering the Ponswood

As the industrial estate in St Leonards-on-Sea approaches 60 years of age, Jude Montague wonders what was built there, and what were the experiences of those who worked there in the early days.

The Ponswood industrial estate was first developed in the 1960s. The etymology of its name is just what you might think. It’s a simple contraction of Pondswood as the estate was built on woodland.

Straight through the middle runs Drury Lane and my first visit to the estate was to the Post Office depot located at this address. Why did it have the same name as London’s famous theatreland road? A little investigation revealed that the street name was thanks to one of the first occupants relocating from Covent Garden, LG Hawkins. The DFL  firm applied for the name while the estate was being built in order to keep a sentimental link to their former address.

LG Hawkins was perhaps the first manufacturing company of electrical equipment to commit to having its works on the Ponswood estate and many more would follow suit.

This history of manufacturing audiovisual and electrical equipment on the Ponswood is extensive and some still remember working there at Kolster-Bandes (KB) or ITT (originally founded in America as International Telephone and Telegraph). Some fascinating stories illustrate a time which is often considered a golden age of work but which for many was also hard, mundane and difficult, with lots of exacting, fiddly work that was done pretty much by hand. Still, with large numbers of staff working together towards a common goal, there was also a sense of community and there are memories of staff outings and parties alongside tales from the production line.

Dennis Nolan recalls being a holiday temporary worker at KB in the summers of 1968 and 1969, an experience that made him determined to do well in his A-levels in order to escape this kind of work as a full-time job. He began in a cubicle with a lathe shaving an eighth-of-an-inch off plastic washers. When he completed the first small box, he took them to the foreman claiming he had finished. This illusion was shattered when he was shown a huge container of these oversized washers on the high shelf behind where he was sitting.

After a week he was shifted to supplying screwing on the backs of TVs as they came off the production line. The next summer he supplied the assembly staff (all female) with components as they put together the colour televisions. Dennis remembers he himself was not fast enough to assemble eight TVs an hour and never got beyond five.

‘Looking back it was quite tough but gave me an experience of life I wouldn’t have otherwise had and I have great respect now for people who didn’t have the life opportunities which came my way’.

In 1970 to 1971 Chris from Herefordshire worked in the Printed Circuit Board department at ITT-KB. He learned about screen-printing using a room-sized camera and photosensitive resists. The worst job he recalled was feeding the etching machine. Each PCB had to be visually inspected for etch resist screen-print defects and touched up by hand (if necessary). It was not even possible to daydream while you ran the screen printer. He describes the process: ‘Bank onto registration pegs on vacuum plate, hands out, push button for print cycle, prise board off vacuum plate with stub of hacksaw blade wrapped in insulating tape for a handle, place printed board on trolley rack, repeat . . .’.

Pamela Taylor remembers working at Redifussion on Saturday mornings and recalls the frustration and bad temper of consumers on that day. Because the engineers didn’t go out after midday on Saturday, people would bring in their malfunctioning  TVs and shout violently at the thought of no TV for the weekend. The first female TV technician apprentice was Maureen Coutts. Maureen was even interviewed for the Manpower Services Commission for a booklet to encourage more women to enter the electronics industry.

This history of repetitive work is completely at odds with the ethics of freedom of artists but more and more are choosing to make their studios here. I went one morning to visit the acclaimed artist Andrew Kotting in the workshop that he shares with his daughter Eden.

He remarked on the sonic landscape of the Ponswood, the sounds that drift around from behind closed doors, process and performance. The meeting of the drumming group every Thursday and the grunt and push of the ZEUS gymnasium add to the atmosphere. There’s audio from Japhy, an independent DJ and distributor dealing in deep and funky electronic music as well as selling Andrew’s Badbloodandsibyl vinyl record collection. The production goes on and on and on . . .

Jude Montague is researching technical innovation and history of St Leonards-on-Sea and Hastings as part of a commemoration of John Logie Baird’s experiments in television that took place here 100 years ago. On 7-13 May 2024 there will be an exhibition at Electro Studios (5 Seaside Rd, Saint Leonards-on-Sea TN38 0AL) called Spirit of Invention which will showcase art and technology. For more details, contact Montague Armstrong, 15 Kings Rd, St Leonards-on-Sea.

Also in: History