That's interesting. It looks as though the Big Top site development was quite a major undertaking. I believe that a number of people have always regarded as a post-war development but it is now obvious that it wasn't.
I'm not quite clear from earlier posts whether these plans were laid in March 1943 for later installation or whether the semi-permanent structures were already installed, or partly installed, by then which seems probably to have been the case (see post #36).
I have written elsewhere in the Forum (Blitz and the Homefront section) about a memory from April 1943, when I was taken to a circus there as a birthday treat. I am 95% sure of that date. It was a very windy day and my mother was not at all happy to be sitting in a tent in those conditions! She was probably right - I think I remember the tent being reported as having been blown down in the next day or two after our visit.
It would be interesting to know the timing of when the site was cleared and levelled off, presumably by 1942; at what point it started to be used for different purposes; and when the semi-permanent structures remembered by many people were first installed.
Chris
I'm not quite clear from earlier posts whether these plans were laid in March 1943 for later installation or whether the semi-permanent structures were already installed, or partly installed, by then which seems probably to have been the case (see post #36).
I have written elsewhere in the Forum (Blitz and the Homefront section) about a memory from April 1943, when I was taken to a circus there as a birthday treat. I am 95% sure of that date. It was a very windy day and my mother was not at all happy to be sitting in a tent in those conditions! She was probably right - I think I remember the tent being reported as having been blown down in the next day or two after our visit.
It would be interesting to know the timing of when the site was cleared and levelled off, presumably by 1942; at what point it started to be used for different purposes; and when the semi-permanent structures remembered by many people were first installed.
Chris