The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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Armstrong Patents East Gate Beverley Shock Absorber Production Circa 1954
Chaplin’s Modern Times comes to mind in this portrait of 1950s factory life, with men metal moulding, and women drilling, assembling, polishing and packaging the end product.
From the collection of:
Overview
What was it like to work on the production line of a typical manufacturing company in the 1950s? Well, this film of Armstrong Patents of Beverley gives a pretty good picture, with men and women working cheek by jowl on the factory floor, tethered to their machines. When Britain was a major producer of car parts as well as cars, these workers, mainly women, in surprisingly colourful attire, are kept busy as they turn out shock absorbers to be shipped across the globe.
Armstrong Patents Co. moved to the Eastgate site in Beverley in 1917, where they specialised in shock absorbers, producing 4,000 a day by the outbreak of war, and employing 450 workers. In 1952 8.7m people worked in manufacturing out of a population of 50m, which by 2010 had dropped to 2.5m out of 62m. Yet although manufacturing contribution to GDP has also sharply declined, perhaps surprisingly, manufacturing output has steadily increased since 1945. Despite much greater automation of the production process, there are still manufacturing jobs that resemble those seen in the film; although the minimum working week of 48-hours is now 37 hours. Film courtesy of East Riding of Yorkshire Council Archives.
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