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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Outcrop at Wentworth 1943
No Bevan Boys here as serious work is underway digging every last ton of coal from the ground, with the help of a giant excavator moving like something out of a science fiction film.
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Overview
Much has been made of Manny Shinwell ordering the park around the Wentworth House to be dug up for open cast mining after the war, but here we see the land around the estate already being open cast mined in 1943. That much needed farm land was turned over for coal excavation shows the priorities of wartime production.
This film was one of a dozen made during the war by Chapeltown dentist and keen filmmaker Willie Thorne. The Wentworth Estate had already earned a fortune for its owners, the Fitzwilliams, mainly due to the coal deposits underground. The open cast excavation of coal in the fields around Wentworth began in 1942. Wentworth House – twice as wide as Buckingham Palace, and with more than 1,000 windows and 365 rooms – was requisitioned for the war to train army motorcycle riders. It became a battle ground itself when the Labour Government forced open cast mining right next to it after the war, in opposition to the National Trust, mining engineers from the University of Sheffield, and the Yorkshire president of the NUM.
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