This tent was destined for the skip until we checked out the ITISA Senior label on the pole bag and found out that the tent is a bit of a rarity. The story goes way back to 1916 when a member of the Camping and Caravanning Club called JH Wood entered his tent design for a competition in the club magazine. A version of it appeared at a club meet in Derbyshire the same year. The 1914/18 World War meant that production of the tent was limited until 1919 when the club’s supplies department, which ultimately came to be called Camtors, produced the Itisa tent – allegedly a shortened version of IT IS A TENT! Camtors continued producing tents, rucksacks and other outdoor gear through to 1946 when, having lost the support of the Camping Club and with an ageing director (RB Searle)at the helm, the company was acquired by Blacks of Greenock who, being quite happy with Camtors product range and clientele, allowed their newly acquired company to continue trading as before. This situation continued until 1966 when Camtors ceased trading and its business was absorbed totally by Blacks, who were busy consolidating their business to cope with ever changing markets. Rather interestingly we have received the following note from Richard MacEwan in Australia, who, it seems, must have bought one of the last Itisa tents. “When I was about 15 I bought an Itisa Nook with aluminium poles, A poles, flysheet and sewn in groundsheet. This was in 1965 so they were still well in the market then and had the full range from Itisa tent to Itisa Senior. I preferred it to Black’s Good Companion which was also available at the time because the long side is the opening as opposed to the Companion which has a narrow opening. I loved that tent to its death after about 10 years use. It was light, quick to put up and had a floor area of 7′ by 5′.” We’re not quite sure where our tent came from, but suspect it’s from the 1950’s, another interesting piece of camping heritage