The Media Archive for Central England is the public screen archive for the East and West Midlands. An independent charity and company based at the University of Lincoln, MACE acquires, catalogues, preserves and makes widely available moving image materials that inform our understanding of the diverse cultures and histories of communities between the Lincolnshire coast and the Welsh border.
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Bass: Harvest Festival 1954
At Old Arley in Warwickshire it's time to celebrate a highlight in the farming calendar.
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Overview
Autumn 1954 and Nuneaton based film-maker Len Bass visits the village of Old Arley in Warwickshire to record the culmination of the farming year. The crops are in and it's time for the annual harvest festival service. Children bring offerings for the church (the bananas and grapes are clearly not a result of farmers toiling in the Warwickshire countryside) and then we see the distribution of the produce amongst a group of children in hospital.
The film may focus on the agricultural life of Old Arley but the main local industry was in fact coal mining with extensive workings including Daw Mill Colliery, which eventually became the final working mine in the West Midlands.
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