The North East Film Archive is one of a network of regional film archives established to collect, preserve and show film made in, or about the North East of England. Our collections are non-fiction, and date from the early 1900s to the present day, providing a rich record of life in the region over the 20th century. Many of our films are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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Catholic Children's Procession Through Middlesbrough
Whatever your faith, the annual Corpus Christi procession was an event you could hardly miss in Middlesbrough.
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Overview
Thousands of marchers, many of them children, join this impressive Festival of Corpus Christi procession through Middlesbrough. Young girls in white dresses and veils are like so many ghostly brides on the street (partly due to overexposure of the film). Judging by the expressions on their faces, teachers have warned them to look solemn and devout for the occasion. Corpus Christi is still celebrated, but this mass catholic ceremonial is now just a memory in the town.
In 1937, more than 30,000 people lined the route of the Corpus Christi procession in Middlesbrough. But these traditional annual events began to wane in popularity in the 1970s. Also featured in this amateur footage, believed to have been filmed in the 1950s, hundreds of school children perform folk dance in Stewart Park, Middlesbrough, in front of Marton Hall. We don’t know if this event was part of the local Corpus Christi celebrations. Marton Hall was once the palatial home of Henry Bolckow, an industrialist and first mayor of the town, built in 1853. A spectacular fire destroyed the house on June 4, 1960, and the council chose to demolish the remaining structure.
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