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Windrose DVD and CD Titles For Sale

RESTAGING THE PAST: THE STORY OF HISTORICAL PAGEANTS | DVD | £10

It all began in the small Dorset town of Sherborne in 1905. An extraordinary character, Louis Napoleon Parker, invented a huge community drama portraying local history in the place where it actually happened. There were beautiful costumes, specially written music, thundering horses and splendid props; all against the backdrop of a ruined castle. Hundreds took part, tens of thousands came to watch and a pageant movement began which swept Britain and other countries.

Restaging The Past tells the story of how pageants developed from smaller towns to great industrial centres, sometimes with casts of many thousands, galvanising communities in a way which has rarely been seen. It explores the commitment of the Pageant Master and the life enhancing experience of amateur performers. It revives music from past pageants and brings together startling archive films from Sherborne in 1905 and pageants in St. Albans, Carlisle, Birmingham, Farnham and Guildford dating from the 1920s to the 1980s. It demonstrates the mass of elaborate ephemera that pageants left behind.

And Pageants have not vanished. The Somerset town of Axbridge brings its history alive with a fresh performance fit for the present day.

Professor Paul Readman tells the tale and some of those who took part in pageants recall one of their greatest moments.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

A CENTURY OF SALISBURY AND DISTRICT ON FILM | DVD | £10

This DVD celebrates Salisbury District with archive films of life in the city and in villages from Zeals in the west to Whaddon in the east. It draws upon Windrose’s amazing collection of old cine films which, with the help of the community, have been discovered and saved over many years. Newly shot interviews add the memories and knowledge of local people.

Films include:

Salisbury Band of Hope 1921
The Salisbury Giant 1927 to 1977
Flying at High Post 1935
Farming at Zeals 1930’s
Life in Mere 1950’s
Whaddon Brickworks 1960’s
V.E. Day in Salisbury 1945
Salisbury Coronation celebrations 1953
Building of Salisbury ring road 1960’s
Oak Apple Day in Wishford 1950’s
Salisbury livestock market and fair 1930’s

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

SALISBURY IN THE SIXTIES | DVD | £10

Founded in 1962, Salisbury Cine Club was a remarkable organisation. It brought together some of the best technical and artistic talents in the Salisbury area. The result was a series of films which won national respect and awards.

Time Off , which shows Salisbury through the eyes of a young boy playing truant from school, was one of a handful of films selected in 1964 to be toured throughout the UK and abroad.

City of Salisbury was made for Salisbury Circles the Globe Week and portrayed life in the city for the benefit of Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia.

Dead Lucky is an intriguing excursion into drama and mystery.

This DVD adds interviews with David Algar, Derek Stirling and Bill Wright, three of the people who were at the heart of the club and its film-making. It also re-unites Judy Warner, daughter of local teacher Derek Warner who directed Time Off as well as many plays at Salisbury’s Studio Theatre, and TV and film actor Brian Protheroe who began his career with the Studio Theatre and by creating music for Time Off.

As a bonus, the DVD includes film from an earlier era: the celebrations that, in 1927, marked the 700^th anniversary of the founding of New Sarum.

So let’s applaud Salisbury’s own film-makers!

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

MUSIC AND MORE | DVD | £10

In south Wiltshire there is a remarkable institution which for many years has given purpose and pleasure to hundreds of young people. The Wilton & District Youth band has drawn generations of these young people from Wiltshire and Dorset into the world of music making. Not only have they become accomplished instrumentalists but they have found a vital social whirl in a rural area where it is often said that there is little for the young to do.

The band plays to all sorts of audiences in all sorts of places and delights people of all ages. It gives its musicians the chance to compete in competitions, it places valuable responsibilities on young shoulders, it supports important causes and it tours the world.

It’s founder and long-term Musical Director, former village postman Dennis Chalk BEM, was for many years its great inspiration. This DVD, made in 1984 and 1985, follows the band through one of its most demanding years during which the players, their parents and Dennis strained every sinew to raise the means to tour the USA. They succeeded and played at the Capitol and before thousands at the Shay Stadium.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

TO CATCH A TRAIN | DVD | £10

In 1985 Windrose made this film about the highly successful efforts by a group in Templecombe, Somerset to get its village railway station re-opened after 16 years of closure. This was a text book community campaign with lessons for many others. Local people galvanised councils and industry in support and restored the derelict platform themselves.

The story is told by many of those most closely involved, including local carpenter Ian Mathews and railwayman Paul Brighton of the campaign group and British Rail Divisional Manager Bernard Whitehall.

There is excellence in the documentary structure, the quality of the film-making is superb, the photography is excellent and the approach is well thought out…I was mightily impressed with this film. – The Railway Magazine

The story -a tale of community spirit winning over officialdom – unfolds in absorbing detail…The atmosphere seems to capture the very heartbeat of a community that won’t be ignored. – Journal of the Volunteer Centre

For anyone pondering a pro-rail campaign, there is much encouragement here. – Steam Railway magazine

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

DOPE UNDER THORNECOMBE| DVD | £10

Frank Trevett was the Bridport man who in 1938, out of sheer enthusiasm and love of amateur film making, brought Dope Under Thorncombe into being with the help of friends and members of his family. It is a feisty tale of dope smugglers on the Dorset coast around West Bay, with a handsome hero defending the honour of a beautiful heroine; rough tough gangsters flouting the law; pursuit, kidnap, fisticuffs, gunplay and bodies being thrown from cliffs! It has always been silent and cries out for music.

Windrose commissioned composer Rachel Leach to create a score to accompany the film. This was performed live at two premiers in the area in which the film was made, to great public acclaim. Members of Frank Trevett’s family were present as guests of honour.

Windrose is now able to present Dope Under Thorncombe on DVD, complete with the music soundtrack for which it has waited for nearly eighty years.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

WORKING THE WOODS | DVD | £10

Back in 1986 the Windrose film crew, then working under its old name of Trilith, spent a night in a Devon wood recording the ancient process of charcoal burning. Forester Charles Driver had made it his one man mission to manage and restore neglected woodland. He wanted no waste from these efforts and high quality charcoal was one of the products of his work.  

Cotleigh Wood was dominated by oak trees which had grown too close together. Consequently they had become over tall, with inadequate girth and small crowns. The aim was to let in the light, liberate the best trees to grow healthily and bring bird and insect life back into the wood.

The small timber that resulted went to the charcoal kiln and Windrose recorded the whole fascinating process of creating charcoal.

The burning goes on in daylight and under the moon. In a small glade at the heart of the wood, away from most of humanity, it takes its time. A night in this secluded place and amongst wildlife is a world away from our normal daily experience.

Windrose also caught something of Charles Driver’s quiet philosophy and produced a portrait of a man who works alone amongst the trees.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

WILLOW | DVD | £10

In the 1980s Windrose made this production about willow growing and basket making on the Somerset moors through all four seasons. It features Gadsby and Sons of Burrowbridge and especially the work of Lewis Boobyer, the man responsible for growing, cutting and processing the willow for the company.

Willow is an amazing natural material. A twig a few inches long, pushed into the earth, will take root and grow. The harvested willow can be boiled to produce the familiar buff colour or, after being allowed to sprout again in shallow water, can be stripped of its bark and used white. Planting, cutting and processing are all shown, as is the skill of turning the finished material into versatile baskets.

Stan Gadsby tells the story of his long-established family business and how it came to be in Somerset.

The moors themselves are unique. Land and water combine. Once it was marsh, full of hidden places; now a landscape of light where the willow crop clatters and whispers in the wind and ice shatters under tractor wheels.

The acreage of willow grown has diminished. Machines have replaced hand cutting. Imports have made inroads. The yard where Lewis worked has gone. But still willow serves the purposes of man.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

THINGS CHANGE | DVD | £10

The Iwerne Minster film was made by a War Ministry cameraman to show two days in the life of a small Dorset village in August 1918; at the end of the First World War. It may well have been made at the behest of James Ismay, who owned the Iwerne Minster estate and employed most of the local community. The aim was to show an English village carrying on despite the conflict.

The version that survived was edited especially for the Iwerne community and includes captions written by James Ismay and the schoolmaster, Mr. Spencer.

James Ismay was the brother of Bruce Ismay who was head of the White Star Line at the time of the Titanic’s sinking. James chose a different way of life, becoming a country gentleman with progressive ideas and a genuine benefactor to his community. He was distraught at the loss of Iwerne men to the war and feared for the future of rural life. The long series of letters that he wrote to local people serving at the front to keep them in touch with home was published in the Iwerne Minster Book after the war.

Life in Iwerne, and in so many places, was never the same again. There are now no more than five people living in the village who descend from the families of 1918. Things Change includes the 1918 film and tells the story of Iwerne Minster, James Ismay and the remaining families whose ancestors appeared in the film.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

A FAMOUS SKILL | DVD| £10

These films say it all: men covering many miles a day up and down dusty rope walks; women tending complex net-making machines so noisy that they drown out speech; outworkers in many villages hand braiding the most delicate work on a doorpost.

Bridport is forever identified with the manufacture of ropes and nets. At the time of King John, the town was already a vital supplier of rigging to the navy. Its products multiplied and were exported throughout the world. They ranged from tennis nets to ships’ hawsers, billiard table pockets to aircraft cargo nets, military camouflage to fishing lines.

Generations of Bridport families have worked in the trade and handed on their accumulated knowledge. A Famous Skill traces the history of the industry, using a wide variety of archive film. Three very experienced workers in the trade, Ron Pinkett, Frances Williams and Elizabeth Wright, explain their skills and what it is like to be part of such a tradition. There is even a demonstration of hand braiding.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

SOLDIERS, CIVILIANS AND STOCKMEN | DVD| £10

Soldiers, Civilians and Stockmen presents a cornucopia of films about the town of Wimborne, Dorset during the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. Local garage proprietor Reg Rodway used his cine camera to chronicle the effect of war on the community. His films are presented by his old friend John Loader. Included are a royal visit, military training, gas mask drill at the school, cadet forces, the Home Guard, land girls working on farms, the fire brigade, the ARP learning to tackle incendiaries, a fish market evacuated from Billingsgate, RAF personnel baptised in the river, the Observer Corps, parades and the eventual joy of dancing in the streets on VE Day. The films are also a telling portrait of the place and the community as they were then.

Peacetime brings the revived carnival and an historical pageant in 1951. There is the Wimborne Hospital Christmas party, with a daring use of mistletoe, and an amusing film made to promote the work of the hospital.

Another film maker, Reg Day, provides a wonderful colour film which captures a morning at Wimborne Market in 1945, when still a livestock market. To this has been added music by Stephen Deutsche and a specially written poem by writer and broadcaster Sean Street. A modern look at the market shows how much has changed.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

PURBECK UNDERGROUND | DVD| £10

Stone quarrying has been part of life in Purbeck, Dorset for many centuries. Its products can be found in cathedrals and in the simplest buildings; in pavements, garden ornaments and sculpture.

The industry has always been a small scale family affair, each quarry worked by a handful of people. Today stone is extracted entirely from open quarries but, well within living memory, men worked underground by candlelight with hand tools. Each “underground” was a kind of personal mine, visible on the surface only as a couple of small sheds, a pony or donkey-worked capstan and a hole in the ground.

In the 1960s a short film was made in which two old stone workers, Jimmy Chinchen and Tommy Collins, explored a disused underground working. Some scenes were shot at Keates quarry nearby, where Jimmy and Tommy worked.

A thirteenth generation quarryman, Kevin Keates adds his commentary to the old film and, in new footage, explores the intricate nature of the stone they work, the traditional terms used by quarrymen, the nature of the modern industry and its future problems. The old film includes revived fragments of soundtrack in which Jimmy and Tommy make their own comments.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

A TALE RETOLD | DVD| £10

In 1998 Frank Marshall told us about a collection of old cinema films that had lain under his workbench for decades. He thought that amongst them might be one film he had particularly enjoyed as a boy. It was an advertisement for an early wireless loudspeaker, the Amplion, and had been used in local cinemas in the 1920s by his father’s pioneering radio business on the Isle of Portland.

When rescued from a pile of rotting nitrate film, it was discovered that the film, called “The Tale of the Amplion”, was a previously unknown work by the famous illustrator William Heath Robinson. It was almost certainly the only animated cartoon that he ever made.

The tale is retold by Frank Marshall, who preserved the film, Gerry Wells of the Vintage Wireless Museum and Geoffrey Beare of the William Heath Robinson Society. Included is the original film, with special music created by Stephen Deutsch.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

PURBECK ON FILM | DVD| £10

Three films with three stories:

SECOND WORLD WAR FARMING at Church Knowle near Corfe Castle, showing the transition from horses to machines. The film was shot, amazingly, on German colour film. Farmers Nancy and Howard Stevens explain why it happened and remember how they lived and worked during the early 1940s.

CORFE CASTLE, its life and its people in 1937. This is one of those wonderful films that records everyday things. Sculptor Mary Spencer-Watson also remembers the artistic community of the area and especially the film’s makers, singers David Brynley and Norman Notley.

SEASIDE HOLIDAYS at Swanage in the early 1930s. Three families get together for their annual holiday in the age of the knitted bathing costume! Sheila Clarke, whose father made the films, recalls childhood memories of blissful summers in Purbeck.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

FIFTY YEARS | DVD| £10

This DVD portrays two eras in the life of the village of Urchfont, Wiltshire: films made in 1936 by Hamilton Rivers Pollock, owner of the estate at Urchfont and a follow up shot 50 years later in 1986.

The 1936 films include farming scenes which demonstrate Pollock’s mission to improve pasture by the methods of the day and an intimate filmed portrait of the village people and their work – shepherd, ploughman, baker, builder, wheelwright, schoolchildren, oldest residents, and many others. There is also a trip to market in Devizes.

Fifty years later, in a series of visits, a new video was created to capture an impression of how Urchfont had changed in the intervening years. People who featured in the 1936 film remembered those times. Both they and other local inhabitants, including children at the local school, were also asked to reflect on what had happened to the village and its community over half a century.
The feelings that emerged then become more telling still with the passage of years since 1986. The Pollock films are accompanied by music especially composed by a young musician, Edward Lewis.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

MOTHER OF ALL PAGEANTS | DVD| £10

Imagine a massive theatrical event with 900 cast and organisers, an audience of 30,000, lavish costumes. orchestra, band, choruses and 50 horses. It is staged in the ruins of Sherborne Old Castle and enacts centuries of local history.

The national papers are fascinated, special trains are run from London and 70 extra police are drafted into Sherborne to control the crowds. A large part of the local community is actively involved. No-one is paid. The event makes a profit, used to create today’s Pageant Gardens. The key to it all is the extraordinary personality of its originator, Louis Napoleon Parker.

The Sherborne Pageant of 1905 sets an example which is taken up by communities across Britain and abroad and continued over generations.

This documentary tells the story and also features the 1905 film of the Pageant itself. True to the original ideal, many local people have taken part. We even hear from a few who were actually there in 1905. Some of the Pageant’s specially written music has been revived and the old film has been given a new piano accompaniment. Surviving costumes and props have been brought out and historical research has turned up the full tale of a local wonder unlikely to be equalled.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

THE WHEEL STOPS TURNING | DVD| £10

The closure of the Crossroads Pottery in 1952 marked the end of 700 years of traditional pot making in Verwood and surrounding area.

Years ago an old film was discovered in a Derbyshire cinema. It showed exactly how the Crossroads Pottery functioned around 1917. Seeing that the film related to Dorset, some-one had the presence of mind to send it to Poole Pottery Museum. From there it went to the Verwood & District Potteries Trust.

This DVD incorporates the old film, together with the voice of potter Len Sims, recorded when he was in his 90s. Penny Copland-Griffiths of the Potteries Trust relates the immense history of the Verwood potteries. Fred Thorne, the last boy to turn a wheel at the Crossroads Pottery, remembers his early working days and John Leach of Mulcheney Pottery tell how his grandfather, the famous Bernard Leach, visited the Verwood potteries when they were still in full production and using methods unchanged for generations.

We also see an archaeological dig on the Crossroads Pottery site, revealing finds that go back centuries.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

STONE IS FOREVER | CD | £5

Stone Is Forever is a Radio Ballad in the tradition of the famous Ballad of John Axon, the heroic railwayman, Singing the Fishing and others broadcast in the late 1950s and the 1960s.

Stone has been quarried in Purbeck, Dorset for many centuries. The original rights conferred upon the quarrying families are enshrined in legend. Today Purbeck stone is extracted from opencast quarries but, well within living memory, men worked underground in small family mines. Theirs was a life lived in labyrinthine tunnels, working by candlelight. Father and son would win great blocks of stone from walls or ceiling and drag them to the tunnel mouth to be hauled to the surface by a donkey or pony turning a windlass. There they would dress and prepare the stone for its eventual use in pavement or cathedral.

The story is told by thirteenth generation quarryman Kevin Keates and by the last man to work underground, Harold Bonfield. It includes an exploration through eight acres of old underground quarry with a single candle, disturbing for a while a place of absolute darkness and silence.
The vivid tale of the Purbeck miners is interwoven with specially composed music by Edward Lewis, which echoes the remoteness of their world from our ordinary experience in the sunlight.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

ALL CHANGE PLEASE…ALL CHANGE | CD | £5

All Change Please, All Change is a Radio Ballad in the tradition of the famous Ballad of John Axon, the heroic engineman, Singing The Fishing and others broadcast in the late 1950s and the 1960s.
It revolves around recordings of three men who have driven and fired steam locomotives on the main line in the modern era: long-term railwaymen from old railway families Ken Binstead and Rodney Tissard and relative newcomer to the footplate Wayne Thompson. Their personal stories, their commitment and endless fascination with their job are interwoven with the powerful sounds of steam at work and the gloriously evocative verses of poet and railway enthusiast Barry Tempest.
Ken, Rodney and Wayne also reflect on how the comradeship and common sense of the traditional railway contrast with the more isolated experience of today’s train drivers and with the more bureaucratic management style of the modern railway. Their words, full of feeling for their profession, are a kind of poetry in themselves.
Included are recordings from steam hauled journeys on the main line between Paignton and Exeter and between Exeter and Salisbury.

Engines featured are:

• BR Standard Class 4MT 76079
• Britannia Pacific 70013 Oliver Cromwell
• Rebuilt Bulleid Pacific 34027 Taw Valley

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

THEATRE OF DELIGHT | CD | £5

Theatre of Delight is a Radio Ballad in the tradition of the famous Ballad of John Axon, the heroic railwayman, Singing the Fishing and others broadcast in the late 1950s and the 1960s.
It recalls the great days of the cinema, when a visit to the pictures was the highlight of the week. This was the era of the big screen, of gilded film theatres and skilled professionals whose job it was to present a genuine spectacle and a world of fantasy. The cinema was a place of comfort and luxury removed from the everyday living conditions of the time.

Three people who spent much of their lives working in Dorset and Bournemouth cinemas remember how it used to be and compare their experiences with cinema today. Joe Heathman and Bob Dwen were in command in the projection box and upon them depended the whole wonderful illusion of the show. Brenda Hough was an usherette; a familiar face and the person who had seen you to your seat and sold you your ice cream with a smile a hundred times.

Their memories, vibrant with love of the Theatre of Delight, are interwoven with specially composed music by Rachel Leach which conjures the glories of the silver screen.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

WALK IN ROOM, WALK IN | DVD | £10

HIGH ABOVE AND DOWN BELOW | DVD | £10

High Above and Down Below – Mendip’s Film Pioneers features the Curzon Cinema in Clevedon, village life in Compton Martin, Winscombe, the snows of 1963 and 1978, Cheddar, Wells and Axbridge.

The DVD is part of A Century of Sights and Sounds, a project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and local sources to preserve Windrose’s massive film, video and audio archive and bring much more of it to the public. 

This has included digitisation, research by students and volunteers, live shows, online access and the use of old films and music with people affected by Alzheimer’s.

The new Somerset DVD begins with a trip to the Curzon Cinema in Clevedon.  Local historian Jane Lilly introduces a 1915 film of the town and its people made at the behest of Victor Cox, the first proprietor of the Curzon.  Bernie Brown plays the cinema organ, just as it used to be. 

In Compton Martin, Dave Salmon, who has lived in the village all his life, is filmed at his grandfather’s pub and takes the viewer back to a lost world through a 1940s film of daily life in his community.  Folk songs sung by Amanda Boyd complete the atmosphere. 

Robert Bird’s father made films around Winscombe in the 1930s and 40s.  His record of the wartime fire brigade contrasts strikingly with the experience of Sean Heighton of the modern Fire and Rescue Service.

The snows of 1963 and 1978 were captured on film, as was the Cheddar flood of 1968.  Farmers Clive Dennis and Andrew Sealey remember how their Mendip farms survived, and John Rowlands of the Environment Agency draws the contrast between conditions then and the computerised warning systems of today.

Siobhan Godwin, who runs Wells Walking Tours, introduces 1930s films of Wells and reflects on a city that is both changeless and changed.

Axbridge had its own professional film maker.  The late Nick Barrington, hotelier, caver and cameraman, is remembered by his friends, Jan and Francis Rabbitts. through his films of caving under Mendip and Axbridge’s Silver Jubilee celebrations in 1977.

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com

REELING ROUND SOMERSET — A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME | DVD | £10

Reeling Round Somerset – A Journey Through Time features archive film of the county as seen through the eyes of those who have lived, worked and played in Somerset.

The DVD includes tourists visiting Glastonbury Abbey in 1916, and an outing to Wookey Hole in 1946; North Perrott’s fruit farm in 1952, the mud fishermen of the Severn in the 1970s, and celebrating George V’s Silver Jubilee in Taunton in 1935; together with memories of wartime, the railway in the 1960s, and Somerset as a holiday destination.

The DVD is part of A Century of Sights and Sounds, a project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and local sources to preserve Windrose’s massive film, video and audio archive and bring much more of it to the public.

This has included digitisation, research by students and volunteers, live shows, online access and the use of old films and music with people affected by Alzheimer’s.

Films include:

Famous Somerset:

Glastonbury Abbey in 1916
Cheddar Gorge in 1916 and the 1930s
An outing to Wookey Hole in 1946

Work:

North Perrott land clearance and fruit farm in 1952
Peat digging in the 1970s
Mud fishermen in the 1990s
Highbridge to Evercreech on the Somerset & Dorset Railway in the 1960s

Urban Somerset:

George V’s Silver Jubilee celebrations in Taunton in 1935
Taunton Carnival in 1935

War:

Milborne Port Home Guard in the 1940s
Revival of fun
Taunton Carnival barrel rolling races in 1967

Holidays:

The Quantocks, Minehead, Exmoor and Dunster in 1916
Around Minehead in 1932 and a boiling radiator on Porlock Hill!
Watching Minehead lifeboat launched in 1932
Good times despite the war – Minehead and Dunster in 1943
Butlins Holiday Camp at Minehead in 1967

To purchase this title, please contact:

Trevor Bailey, Windrose, Corner Cottage, Brickyard Lane, Bourton, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 5PJ
Tel. 01747 840750 Email: tbailey352@btinternet.com