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It was the summer we were urged to 'turn on, tune in and drop out' and 'make love, not war.'

A new confident attitude had engulfed the nation and the sexual revolution had begun in earnest. So, what were the defining characteristics of those heady months in 1967?

Fashion

Mini-skirts, paisley and knee-high white boots were a must and hair hung loose.ÌýÌý

Pippa Thorne is conservator at the Norwich Textiles Study Centre and has clear memories of late '60s fashion.

"There were a lot of flower prints about and velvet.Ìý A lot of casual wear... men would wear velvet trousers and jackets and flowered shirts," recalls Pippa.

"I still have a lot of my material that I wore then, including a very nice tie dye granddad's vest with hipster trousers and loons, that are very different to flares because they fitted tightly on the hips but were much wider on the bottom."

Great Yarmouth's Peter Jay was touring with his band, The Jaywalkers, at the time and remembers his own fashion favourites.

"I had kaftans and as many rows of beads that you could get and a sort of Jimi Hendrix-style haircut," recalls Peter.

Ìý"I thought it was perfectly normal but I think it was pretty way-out for Yarmouth at the time!"

Music

The summer of 1967 was the era of peace and love, and nowhere more was this reflected than in the music.ÌýThe Beatles had discovered a new sound and Britain's teenagers loved every second of it.

Musician John Dunn was a schoolboy in Cromer at the time. He has vivid memories of the first time he heard Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

"I bought my copy on 1 June 1967, came home and played it in pitch darkness. I was a rather pretentious 17-year-old and I played it deafeningly loud," said John.

"I thought it was wonderful, it blew my head off!"

Jimi Hendrix was taking America by storm, but found the time to play Norfolk on his way to superstardom, as cartoonist Mike Webb recalls.

"I think it might have been Dereham Corn Exchange...and it wasn't that crowded," said Mike.

"He'd had at least three hits in the charts by then, but we were able to get to the front, sit on the corner of the stage and get a pretty good view. It was great."

Drugs

But along with the music came the drugs: for some, a regrettable development. Norwich artist Colin Self described his experiences.

"A good friend of mine sold me a little bit of stuff and I tried that," said Colin.

"I don't like saying this because I absolutely do not condone drugs, but all you could do was sit down. You sat there absolutely staggered, this stuff was totally hallucinogenic."

Peter Jay believes drug users were taking terrible risks.

"There was a big soft drugs scene at the time," Peter remembers.

"We all tried it, but I always thought it was very overrated. A lot of people didn't survive the '60s. It was a lesson to me... and I'm very anti-drugs now."

The Pill

That summer should have been a sexual paradise: the contraceptive pill became readily available, abortions were legalized and the law over gay relationships was relaxed.Ìý

But was it as liberating as it seemed?

Singer Gina Dunn was marched off to the doctor by her mother at the age 14 to be put on the pill. At the time she saw it as real freedom.

"I think superficially there was a kind of feeling of being able to make choices and be very sexually direct... if you fancied somebody, you could have sex with them just on a whim," said Gina.

"But when I look back on it now I think it was probably one of the most chauvinistic times, because it absolved men of a proper level of responsibility for their actions, it placed the heavier burden on women."

Naomi runs a shop in Norwich and many of her customers were teenagers during the Summer Of Love.Ìý

She agrees that the introduction of the pill changed many women's lives, but that it didn't necessarily provide the solution it promised.

"I think many women may have grown up in families where perhaps discussing sex was taboo... and just the fact that this opportunity to have sex without the fear of pregnancy becomes available doesn't necessarily mean that you should have it at every available opportunity," said Naomi.

"The indiscriminate behaviour that they may have had, which they thought was freedom, which they thought was a grown up, maturing experience... and now they realise that just because you can, doesn't mean you should."