Yorkshire Film Archive - putting the past in motion (From York Press)

Yorkshire Film Archive - putting the past in motion

12:25pm Monday 5th December 2011 in History articles By Stephen Lewis

The Yorkshire Film Archive holds more than six million feet of film – remarkable moving images of Yorkshire’s history. Thanks to its revamped website, much of this material is now more accessible than ever. STEPHEN LEWIS reports.

THE footage is in grainy black and white. It moves with odd little jerks. And yet as you watch, you can’t help feeling deeply moved. A column of men in smart fatigues march briskly across Lendal Bridge, their rifles sloped across their shoulders.

Some smile at the camera, others wave their military caps in the air.

As the column moves nearer, you notice a woman walking beside one of the soldiers. She’s wearing a scarf and a long coat, topped off by a black hat. She’s facing straight ahead, but look closely and you can see that her hand holds then releases that of the soldier marching beside her.

It never fails to get him, that moment, admits Graham Relton.

These are the young men of the 5th battalion of the Yorkshire and Lancashire Regiment. It is 1915, and they are marching off to war. Many of them will never come home again. “And you have this woman marching beside the moving column, holding her husband’s hand,” Graham says.

This wonderful snatch of film, incredibly almost 100 years old now, is just one of countless treasures held by the Yorkshire Film Archive in its vaults at York St John University.

The archive, an independent charity, has about 16,000 films, dating back to the 1890s.

One of the earliest, incredibly, shows footage of Queen Victoria visiting Sheffield. There is also a copy of a short film of horse-drawn traffic crossing Leeds Bridge in 1888. Made by Louis le Prince, it lays claim to being one of the earliest moving images ever produced. The images were captured on paper, at 12 frames to the second – enough, says archive manager Graham, to create the illusion of movement, although the film was never projected.

The archive contains six million feet of film all told, relating to the whole of Yorkshire. It includes industrial footage of the mills and looms of West Yorkshire in action, glimpses of rural life, newsreel of important events, and family films. Between them they add up to a wonderful social history of the county.

As you’d expect, there is plenty of film of York. Anyone with an interest in the city’s history will delight in a short film which shows Seebohm Rowntree getting off a red, double-decker bus on his way to visit Joseph Rowntree School in 1947. There is also some amazing footage of people playing on the frozen River Ouse in the 1930s. In one scene in particular, a gentleman in a long black coat cycles carefully up the middle of the frozen river, a picture of elegance.

There is footage, too, of familiar York landmarks: a horse and cart coming under the arch that leads beneath the city wall from Station Avenue to Station Road and Lendal Bridge; and more horse drawn vehicles at Micklegate Bar.

This being York, the streets and buildings look not much different to today. What is different – and what brings you up with a pleased shock of surprise – is seeing the horses and carts rattling around York’s streets in full, if jerky, motion.

Anyone who is a regular reader of The Press’s Yesterday Once More column will be used to seeing still photographs of such scenes. Seeing them move is something different altogether.

The archive is just that: an archive. It is a charity that was first set up in a basement at the old College of Ripon and York St John in Ripon in 1988, and which moved to its present location in Lord Mayor’s Walk in 2004 with the help of a Heritage Lottery grant.

Its main purpose is to preserve these priceless films for posterity, and as a resource for film-makers and historians. You can’t therefore just walk in and watch the films at will.

But the seven staff at the archive are dedicated to making sure that – within reason, and given the constraints on their time – as much of the footage can be seen by the public as possible. “What’s the point of it just getting dusty and not being seen by people?” asks Graham.

The archive has long had a history, therefore, of taking compilations of film clips – not the originals films, but edited digital copies – out to show in halls and community meeting rooms around the county.

It is asked to do about 150 such ‘community film screenings’ a year – and although there are not enough staff to cope with that many, the charity’s director Sue Howard and Graham Relton between them do manage about 50 every year.

They are an important part of the archive’s work, says Sue. Apart from delighting local audiences with these glimpses of their community’s past, the archive staff themselves often learn a great deal about the footage they are showing. “Often the local groups have a lot more knowledge than we do,” Sue says.

Earlier this year, from September 23 to October 5, the archive mounted North Yorkshire’s first festival of archive film, which was staged in communities and villages around the county.

And in another major step towards making its priceless archive of films publicly accessible, the organisation has recently revamped its online presence, with a new website.

You can now see more than 60 hours of historic film footage online free of charge – search by decade, area or theme to find film that interests you – and there is also a feature called the Yorkshire Calendar, which every week showcases a different 60-second clip of old film from somewhere in the county.

If you’re at all interested in local history, the website is well worth checking out: a wonderful glimpse of a vanished yet familiar past brought to vivid, moving life.

• The Yorkshire Film Archive website is at yorkshirefilmarchive.com