IT is the fad which hit the south in the 1960s and is still going strong today.

Teenagers on skateboards have been a feature of towns and cities across Hampshire for more than 50 years.

And in the mid 1960s heads were turning in Southampton’s Above Bar when a skateboard manufacturer came to town for the first time.

In an article in the Daily Echo in June 1965 we wrote: “In the last six months more than one million of our transatlantic cousins have taken to the sidewalks on two feet long skate boards with wheels fore and aft.”

The article showed a picture of a 20-year-old Andrew Cartwright, who represented the US firm importing the boards, demonstrating the craze in the city just two weeks before they went on general sale priced £4.

From that moment on, skateboarding took off as these pictures from our archives from the 1970s and 80s show.