NOSTALGIA: Field gun crew take a break at Havant for '˜delicious bacon'

A field gun and limber in West Street, Havant, during the First World War.

Central Stores advocates trying its own mild breakfast bacon with a ‘delicious flavour’. I bet it was.

The book is available from the Spring Arts Centre, East Street, Havant.

And so to the more modern picture of the same Havant location.

The the same corner as where the field gun was parked but some 60 years later in 1979.

These are not so much ‘then and now’ pictures as ‘then and then’ as the more modern photo is in fact 40 years old and 60 years older then the first photo.

It was taken in the late 1970s and comes from Havant Seen and Remembered by Geoff Salter and Derek Dine which was published in 1979.

When I was a lad of about 10 I used to sell the Evening News and Football Mail from these very steps outside the bank on a Saturday evening until 9pm. I kid you not.

• Many Portsmouth people will know of Harry Pounds and his scrapyard surrounded by Tipner Lake at the northern end of Portsea island.

Roger Allen standing alongside one of the hidden tanks at Poundss scrapyard, Tipner, Portsmouth.

Unless you lived in the Stamshaw, Tipner or Rudmore areas most would not know where it was until the M275 was built.

The motorway went right through the heart of the yard and it became a feature of driving into the city.

In these two photographs we can see the yard on the eastern side of the M275 nearing its final days although there is much scrap still to be seen.

They were lent to me by Roger Allen, a former employee at the yard who went into the scrap business himself in the early 1970s. Next month I will write a much more detailed account of Roger’s work, including the breaking of the frigate HMS Russell.

Part of Harry Pound's scrapyard at Tipnerin the 1970s with the recently constructed M275 in the background

You might think Harry Pounds (real name Henry) bought only ships and submarines to break up, but after the Second World War he purchased dozens of tanks.

The rule was that there was a Scrapping Clause always inserted when he bought them.

However, being a wise old bird he knew there would one day be a market for them, so he covered the tanks in piles of scrap to hide them from the authorities.

Many years later the tanks were uncovered and sold on to museums and collectors for much more than he bought them for.

Roger says they even got one to work which they used to drag others around the Tipner scrapyard.