Lews

Journey by steam train and ship from Edinburgh to Lewis, and enjoy a slice of island life from 1934 - 1964, in this lovely amateur colour film with enticing storybook inter-titles.

'Let’s away from the city… Away to the west, where the ocean’s breast heaves to the cloud-swept sky’. Journey by steam train and ship from Edinburgh to Lewis, and enjoy a slice of island life as you’ve never seen it - a girl hangs bedclothes on a fence at Timsgarry Post Office, with its battered red phone box, a teacher with glasses, bun and pink cardigan holds court in a 1950s school, an old lady spins at her wheel. A lovely amateur colour film with enticing storybook inter-titles.

Filmed by W.S. Dobson at ‘The Lews’, a Victorian fishing lodge at Uig on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, which belonged to the film-maker's brother, Jim. Mr Dobson was an award-winning amateur film-maker, scooping up awards from Amateur Cine World, the Scottish Association of Amateur Cinematographers and the Scottish Amateur Film Festival. His son, W.S. Dobson junior, was also an award-winning film-maker, receiving acclaim from a young age, and the duo received commissions to make promotional films for organisations such as the Scottish Youth Hostels Association and the Edinburgh Infantile Paralysis Fellowship, as well as recording their own family and holidays films.