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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Came the Dawn
This whimsical story of boys running late for assembly at Bootham School, York, gives a fascinating glimpse into what it was like to attend a typical boarding school of the 1930s.
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Overview
A humorous recreation of mornings at Bootham Boarding School in York before the war. As getting up time arrives, the boys begrudgingly rise from their beds, or not, to get washed and dressed ready for the school day. Here, with much rushing around and larking about, the failure of two boys to make class on time leads to them having to write the dreaded lines.
This is one of several films relating to the Quaker School of Bootham in the 1930s made by Alan Pickard, who attended the school between 1920 and 1924. Quakerism is strong in York, and it was the Quaker William Tuke who proposed the school in 1822 (all the Rowntree family attended). The Stephen Richardson who appears in the film is the son of the meteorologist, mathematician and pacifist Lewis Fry Richardson who also attended the School. Freddy Ward was at the school between 1934-40, John Crockatt 1932-38, and Len Crawford was the school electrician. A pupil who started the year after this film, who surely would have added to its farce, was a young Brian Rix (thanks to Jenny Orwin archivist at Bootham School).
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