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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Family Snapshots
The family of a local dignitary displaying all those elements of a way of life that some hark back to as a time before England lost its traditional values.
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Overview
A portrait of a seemingly idyllic family in pre-war rural Yorkshire, with the three children playing with puppies in the garden and grooming their ponies. Meanwhile, daddy sits in his chair with his pipe leafing through a copy of Horse and Hounds, with the Vauxhall 25 GL Limousine parked outside. Then it’s on to a sherry party held in the family garden, with guests chatting to the local clergy.
This is one of a collection of films made in the 1930s and ‘40s by Malton solicitor and councillor Mr Folliott Ward, mainly of the family but also of local animal hunting. The films show a happy family, especially for the children when evacuees from Middlesbrough arrived in 1939. But as daughter Heather has revealed, they don’t tell the whole story, with both her sister and herself disturbed by the otter hunts they would go on.
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